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PRINCETON,  N.  J.  '^ 


.^#^  ^'^\^ 


Presented    by 


Fv-o\.3oVra)^\>i\-VV  .T)  .^. 


BX  5937  .D7  S4  1893 
Douglas,  George  William, 

1850-1926. 
Sermons  preached  in  St. 

John's  Church 


il,U 


X 


.OU-c, 


SERMONS 

PREACHED    IN    ST.   JOHN'S    CHURCH, 

WASHINGTON,  D.C. 


BY 


GEORGE  WILLIAM  DOUGLAS,  S.T.D. 


NEW    YORK: 
ANSON  D.  P.  RANDOLPH  AND  COMPANY 

(incorporated), 
182    Fifth    Avenue, 


Copyright,  189S, 

By  Anson  D.  F.  Kandolph  and  Company 

(incokpokated). 


Santbersttg  Press : 
John  Wilson  and  Son,  Cambridge. 


TO 

MY    FRIENDS    AND    PARISHIONERS 

OF 

ST.   JOHN'S    CHURCH, 

WASHINGTON,  D.C. 

THESE  SERMONS,  PREACHED  IN  THEIR  MIDST  AND  PUBLISHED  AT 
THEIR   REQUEST, 

ARE  AFFECTIONATELY  DEDICATED. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


"f  ^ /"HEN  I  resigned  my  cure  of  St.  John's  Parish 
last  autumn,  so  many  of  my  kind  parishioners 
expressed  a  wish  for  a  volume  of  my  sermons  that  I 
felt  bound  to  comply  with  their  request.  It  seemed 
that  at  least  the  volume  would  be  likely  to  subserve 
the  only  purpose  for  which  I  could  desire  to  publish 
it,  namely,  that  of  securing  to  some  earnest  souls  for 
continual  reference  the  thoughts  which,  when  origi- 
nally uttered,  had  by  God's  blessing  proved  helpful. 
Some  of  my  people  expressed  a  desire  for  particular 
sermons ;  and  these  I  have  put  into  this  volume  as 
far  as  possible ;  but  as  most  of  my  papers  had  been 
boxed  and  packed  away  before  this  publication  was 
decided  on,  I  regret  that  it  has  been  out  of  my  power 
to  include  herein  all  the  sermons  that  were  thus  par- 
ticularly asked  for.  Knowing  the  circumstances, 
those  kind  friends  who  are  hereby  disappointed  will 
not  infer  that  I  have  slighted  their  expressed  wish, 
or  that  I  am  lacking  in  gratitude  for  their  assurance 
that  words  of  mine,  which  were  never  intended  for 
publication,  have  by  them  been  thought  worthy  of  it. 


Vi  PREFATORY  NOTE. 

For  myself  this  volume  will  be  a  memento  of  three 
happy  years  in  an  unique  parish,  and  of  friendships 
which  I  shall  never  forget. 

I  could  have  wished  to  indicate  accurately  the 
sources  to  which  I  am  consciously  indebted  for 
thoughts  and  illustrations  throughout  this  volume ; 
but  as  I  have  been  obliged  to  publish  the  book  while 
separated  from  my  own  library  by  three  thousand 
miles,  and  with  no  other  library  at  hand,  it  has  been 
impossible  to  do  this,  except  in  a  few  cases  where 
footnotes  have  been  added  to  some  of  the  sermons. 
In  general  I  desire  to  acknowledge  my  great  indebt- 
edness to  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Liddon,  Dean  Church, 
Canon  Mozley,  Canon  Scott  Holland,  Phillips  Brooks, 
M,  Bersier,  and  Schleiermacher ;  to  various  volumes 
of  Martineau  and  R.  H.  Ilutton  ;  to  Lotze's  "  Mikro- 
kosmos ;  "  to  the  volume  entitled  "  What  is  Reality," 
by  F.  H.  Johnson  ;  and  to  articles  published  through- 
out many  years  in  the  columns  of  the  London 
"  Spectator." 

Hotel  Raymond,  East  Pasadena,  California. 
Epiphany,  1893. 


CONTENTS. 


SERMON  PAGK 

I.     Overcoming  the  World 1 

II.     Thanksgivixg  Day  Sermon 13 

III.  The  End  of  Human  Life  (Advent  Sermon)  27 

IV.  All  Saints'  Day  Sermon 38 

V.     Christmas  Sermon 51 

VI.     The  Christ  as  Wonderful 62 

Vn.    Modern   Humanitarianism    Depends  on 

Christ 80 

VIII.     Possessing    all    Things     because     Pos- 
sessed  OF   Christ      ........  96 

IX.     How  Christ  Manifested  Helps  Human 

Faith  (Epiphany  Seinion) 113 

X.     The  Manifestation  of    Life  (Septuages- 

ima  Sermon) 128 

XL     Leanness  of  Soul  (Sexagesima  Sermon)  .  140 

XII.     Importance  op  the  Christian  Vision     .  155 

XIII.  Self-Preservation     by     Self-Sacripice 

(Ash- Wednesday  Sermon) 170 

XIV.  Sunday  Observancb  (Lenten  Sermon)  .     .  182 
XV.     The  Seared  Conscience  (Lenten  Sermon)  195 


viii  CONTENTS. 

SEEMON  PAGE 

XVI.     Christ's  Verdict    on   His   own    Suffer- 
ings (Passion  Sunday  Sermon)    ....  208 
XVn.    Human   Life    Unreasonable  unless  Im- 
mortal (Easter  Sermon) 222 

XVin.     The     Resurrkc ''ion     a    Fulfilment    of 

Man's  Natural  Desire  (Easter  Sermon)  236 

XIX.     The  Longsuffering  God 247 

XX.     Authoritative  Religion 260 

XXI.     Standing  Before  God  (Farewell  Sermon)  278 


SERMONS. 


OVERCOMING    THE    WORLD.^ 

These  things  have  I  spoken  unto  you  that  in  Me  ye  might 
have  peace.  ...  Be  of  good  cheer;  I  have  overcome  the 
world.  —  St.  John  xvi.  oo. 

THESE  words  were  spoken  before  Christ's  death  ; 
yet  they  did  not  anticipate,  they  actually  ex- 
pressed Christ's  victory  ov^er  death.  For  these  words 
indicate  the  underlying  fact  of  Christ  s  being,  which 
alone  made  His  Resurrection  possible.  Xo  single,  iso- 
lated act  of  any  person's  career  is  significant  apart 
from  the  whole  being  of  the  person.  The  act  is  but 
the  sign  and  outcome  of  the  personality  that  finds  ex- 
pression in  the  act.  The  thing  that  seems  decisive 
in  any  man's  career  —  the  event  that  lifts  him  into 
prominence  or  sinks  him  in  oblivion  —  is  the  mani- 
festation of  what  was  in  the  man  beforehand.  Even 
so  our  Lord  and  Saviour  was  not  so  much  prophesy- 
ing the  future  as  expressing  the  present  when,  during 
that  discourse  to  His  disciples  in  the  upper  chamber 

1  First  Sermon  preached  in  St.  John's  Chnrcli,  Nov.  3,  1889. 
1 


2  OVERCOMING  THE   WORLD. 

at  Jerusalem,  He  declared  to  theiii  in  advance  of 
His  Passion,  "  Be  of  good  cheer ;  I  have  overcome 
the  world."  In  the  actual  hidden  fact  of  His  being 
and  character,  Christ  even  there  and  then  had  con- 
quered the  world ;  and  His  enduring  the  Cross  and 
the  triumph  of  His  Resurrection  were  but  outward 
proofs  of  this. 

It  was  not  easy,  that  night  of  the  Last  Supper,  to 
perceive  that  Jesus  had  overcome  the  world.  It 
looked  rather  as  if  the  world  had  overcome  him. 
How  then  shall  we  explain  that  unseen  victory  ? 
How  is  it  that  Jesus,  even  at  the  moment  of  his 
apparent  shame  and  overthrow  by  the  world,  was 
really  so  superior  to  it  ?  We  must  understand  first 
what  Jesus  in  these  words  intended  by  "  the  world." 

Of  all  tlie  terms  employed  in  Holy  Scripture,  none 
is  more  various,  more  elusive  in  its  meaning,  than 
this.  The  term  is  elusive  because  the  thing  is  so. 
"  The  world  "  is  not  the  material  universe  only,  nor 
brute  nature  only,  nor  man  only.  It  may  be  each 
and  all  of  these  ;  it  may  be  none  of  them.  Its 
capacity  of  transformation  is  marvellous.  Why,  this 
world  that  Christ  calls  sinful  oftentimes  punishes  sin 
for  the  reason  that  sin  is  not  respectable  ;  and  con- 
stantly the  world  helps  to  build  churches,  to  endow 
hospitals,  and  further  Christian  missions,  to  dissemi- 
nate the  Bible,  to  uphold  good  morals,  because  these 
things  are  respectable.  Nevertheless,  Saint  James 
tells  us  that  the  friendship  of  the  world  is  enmity 


OVERCOMING  THE   WORLD.  3 

with  God.  Again,  the  world  is  not  the  devil,  though 
the  devil  is  the  prince  of  this  world.  It  is  not  the 
flesh,  though  fleshly  lusts  thrive  in  the  world.  Tt  is 
not  so  much  sin  —  this  or  that  sin  —  as  the  atmo- 
sphere, the  arena,  the  hothouse  of  sin. 

All  this  is  vague,  but  it  is  the  vagueness  of  the 
fact,  —  the  vagueness  that  characterizes  even  our 
Lord's  language  when  speaking  of  the  world.  For 
example,  Christ  says,  on  the  one  hand :  "  I  am  the 
Light  of  the  world."  "  God  so  loved  the  world, 
that  He  gave  His  only-begotten  Son."  "  God  sent 
not  His  son  into  the  world  to  condemn  the  world, 
but  that  the  world  through  him  might  be  saved." 
On  tlie  other  hand,  Christ  says:  "O  righteous  Fa- 
ther, the  world  hath  not  known  Thee."  "  I  pray 
not  for  the  world."  "  Those  whom  Thou  hast  given 
Me  are  not  of  the  world,  even  as  I  am  not  of  the 
world. '  "  I  have  overcome  the  world."  Yet  every 
docile  reader  of  the  Bible  feels  after  a  while  that 
these  apparently  conflicting  terms  are  true  to  life. 
The  reason  why  our  Saviour's  language  is  so  elusive 
in  this  regard  is  that  the  world  is  only  the  world 
when  man  regards  it  as  such.  There  is  no  one 
thing,  no  honest  trade  or  profession,  no  style  of  liv- 
ing, on  which  you  can  lay  your  finger  and  say  cer- 
tainly, "  That  is  the  world  ;  to  have  that,  to  do  that, 
to  be  there,  is  to  be  worldly."  Lazarus  may  be  quite 
as  worldly  as  Dives.  The  same  thing  may  or  may 
not  be  the  world,  according  to  the  point  of  view. 


4  OVERCOMING   THE   WORLD. 

The  world  is  the  temporal  when  mistaken  for  the 
eternal ;  the  creature  when  I'egarded  apart  from  the 
Creator.  To  overcome  the  M^orld,  as  Christ  did,  is 
to  realize  in  feeling,  tiiought,  and  action  that  the 
world  cannot  stand  of  itself;  is  to  recognize,  in  other 
words,  that  all  which  man  sees  and  possesses  and 
rests  upon,  as  he  moves  across  this  earthly  stage,  is 
not  only  a  gift  from  God,  but  could  not  exist  without 
God,  —  that  it  is  but  the  instrument  of  God's  ac- 
tivity, the  screen  of  God's  Presence,  the  token  of 
God's  Love.  To  say  this,  and  to  mean  it,  is  to  over- 
come the  world.  The  moment  that  the  travelling 
soul  mistakes  the  inn  for  the  home,  that  moment  the 
soul  is  worldly.  "  JNIan,  thou  hast  forgotten  thine 
object.  Thy  journey  is  not  to  this,  but  through  it."  ^ 
And  it  cannot  be  too  much  insisted  on  that  the 
mistake  in  the  worldling's  choice  is  not  between  this 
world  and  the  next,  but  between  any  world  and 
God,  —  between  the  creature  and  the  Creator.  In- 
dependence of  God  is  worldliness,  or  rather  the 
fancy  that  we  can  be  independent  of  Him.  It  does 
not  take  long  for  thoughtful,  conscientious  men  to 
be  weaned  from  dependence  on  this  world,  for  they 
see  how  it  changes  and  palls  and  passes  under  their 
very  eyes ;  but  the  man  wdio  simply  exchanges  his 
hopes  of  this  present  state  of  being  for  hopes  of  some 
vaguely  expected  other  state  of  being  to  follow  after 
it  is  a  worldly  man  still ;  and  this  worldliness  is  so 

1  Epictetus. 


OVERCOMING  THE   WORLD.  5 

subtle,  so  persistent,  that  some  persons  who  fancy 
themselves  full  of  the  spirit  of  Jesus  never  cease  to 
be  worldly.     To  give  up  depending  o/i  the  things  of 
this  life,  and  then  to  depend  on  the  things  of  another 
life,  is  but  to  exchange  one  form  of  worldliness  for 
another.     The  right  course  is  to  recognize  in  both 
worlds  that  God  is  all  in  all.     The  yearning  for  the 
unseen  and  the  eternal  is  not  necessarily  the  true 
Christian  yearning  for  God ;  it  is  too  ignorant,  too 
selfish  a  yearning,  —  a  yearning  that  has  missed  the 
lesson  which  this  life  was  intended  to  convey.     The 
contrast  between  the  sufferings  of  this  present  world 
and  the  glories  of  the  next  is  a  contrast  that  finds  no 
support  in  Scripture,  unless  it  be  further  perceived 
that  the  essential  glory  of  heaven  is  the  soul's  appre- 
hension of  its  God,  its  direct  conscious  leaning  upon 
God,  —  that  and  nothing  else ;  and  if  this  be  per- 
ceived,  then  it  will  be  furthermore  acknowledged, 
as  Christ  and  His  Apostles  constantly  insisted,  that 
the    true   Christian's   conversation    is    even  now  in 
heaven,  that  even  now  he  can  overcome  the  world, 
because  now  he  can  rise  with  Christ  into  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  eternal  God  and  Father,  in  whom 
he  lives  and  moves  and  has  his  being. 

How  full  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  are 
of  expostulations  on  God's  part  with  the  human  soul 
for  not  recognizing  Him  as  the  only  ground  of  its 
stability ;  and  our  own  daily  experience  is  a  present 
prophecy  to  the  same  effect.     First,  God  gives  the 


6  OVERCOMING  THE    WORLD. 

helpless  infant  food,  raiment,  and  a  home ;  but  as 
the  child  grows  up  he  finds  home  lovely  for  its  own 
sake,  and  depends  on  it  as  if  it  belonged  to  him  out- 
right. So  God  breaks  up  the  home.  Tlien  comes  a 
second  lesson,  to  be  learned  no  better.  The  youth, 
set  adrift  in  society,  chooses  some  business  or  pro- 
fession ;  and  by  this  God  grants  him  self-support, 
and  new-made  friends,  and  perhaps  some  measure  of 
fair  fame.  But  here  again  the  young  man  takes  the 
gifts  and  forgets  the  Giver.  Then  trials  come,  and 
reverses,  and  bereavement,  and  loneliness,  and  ill- 
health  ;  yet  far  from  recognizing  that  God  is  simply 
taking  back  what  God  had  given,  the  man  still  clings 
convulsively  to  what  God  leaves  him,  instead  of 
clinging  to  God ;  and  when  he  confronts  death  he 
thinks  himself  religious,  a  true  Christian,  if  he  merely 
shifts  his  avarice  from  things  here  to  things  beyond 
the  grave.  It  is  like  the  farewell  visit  of  David  Cox 
to  the  room  where  his  aquarelles  were  hanging,  when 
he  felt  that  death's  hand  was  touching  him,  and  said, 
"  Dear  pictures,  I  shall  never  see  you  more  !  "  It  is 
like  Walter  Scott  in  his  last  days,  when  they  wheeled 
him  about  the  rooms  at  Abbotsford,  and  he  looked 
at  his  antique  armor  and  the  bindings  of  his 
books,  and  said,  "  Give  me  one  turn  more."  It  is 
very  natural ;  it  is  exquisitely  pathetic ;  but  it  is 
not  what  Christ  meant  when  He  said  as  He  was 
dying,  "  Be  of  good  cheer,  I  have  overcome  the 
world."     The  aim  and  attitude  of  the  man  are  not 


OVERCOMING  THE   WORLD.  7 

yet  really  Christianized.  His  momentary  possession  of 
the  creature  intoxicates  him  into  ignoring  the  Creator. 
His  vision  of  things  temporal  blinds  him  to  the  pres- 
ence and  the  efficiency  and  the  beauty  of  Him  by 
whom  alone  things  temporal  or  things  eternal  are 
sustained.  Sooner  or  later  in  the  providential  pro- 
cess of  its  education  the  human  soul  becomes  con- 
scious, on  tlie  one  hand,  of  its  own  indomitable 
desire  for  stability,  —  for  something  to  which  the 
soul  can  cling  and  be  attached  —  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  of  the  actual  instability  of  each  successive 
thing  which  it  attempts  to  cling  to.  "  We  brought 
nothing  into  this  world,  and  it  is  certain  we  can 
carry  nothing  out."  How  many  persons  suppose  that 
the  Christian  antidote  for  the  discouragement  of  this 
experience  is  the  Bible  promise  of  a  better  world  to 
come,  —  of  new  heavens  and  a  new  earth  wherein 
dwelleth  righteousness ;  where  we  shall  find  again, 
transfigured  and  spiritualized,  all  that  we  here  have 
tried  to  rest  upon  and  could  not,  all  that  we  have 
aimed  at  and  missed,  all  that  we  have  loved  and 
lost;  and  where  our  faculties  of  mind,  that  here 
waxed  faint,  shall  revive  and  find  everlasting  scope. 
But  although  the  Bible  promises  this,  it  makes  the 
promise  on  one  condition :  that  the  man  who  enters 
heaven  shall  recognize  that  God  is  all  in  all,  —  that 
heaven  itself  is  only  heaven  because  God  is  there. 
The  Creator  put  man  in  Eden  and  made  him  master 
of  every  thing   save  one ;  one  forbidden  tree  must 


8  OVERCOMING   THP]   WORLD. 

stand  to  him  as  a  rcniindcr  tliat  nothing  was  really 
his,  but  only  lent  him  by  God  and  by  God  maintained 
in  being.  It  was  Corban,  a  gift,  that  man  might  be 
profited  thereby.  Man  lost  Eden  because  he  forgot 
tliis ;  he  shall  never  get  back  to  Eden  without  ad- 
mitting it,  and  the-  time  to  admit  is  during  this  life 
on  earth.  "  Now  it  is  high  time  that  we  awake  out 
of  sleep.'  In  any  world,  —  tliis  or  another,  —  of  God 
and  to  God  and  through  God  are  all  things,  and  by 
God  all  things  consist.  That  which  makes  this  earth 
to  some  men  little  better  than  an  anteroom  of 
hell  —  that  which  makes  it  full  of  their  greed  and 
impatience,  of  lust  and  crime  and  envy  and  dis- 
obedience to  laws  —  is  their  failure  to  have  faith  in 
this  immanence  of  the  Almighty  in  the  world.  "  My 
soul  hangeth  upon  Thee."  "  Whom  have  I  in  heaven 
but  Thee,  and  there  is  nothing  upon  earth  that  I 
desire  in  comparison  of  Thee."  "  Thou,  O  Lord 
God,  art  the  thing  that  I  long  for."  All  my  "  fresh 
springs  arc  in  Thee."  And,  on  the  contrary,  this 
honest  realization  of  God's  immanence  and  prov- 
idence  is  what  gathers  up  and  simplifies  all  else  that 
we  know  of  life  here  or  hereafter :  it  is  the  great 
fact  by  which  all  the  lesser  facts  are  focussed,  —  the 
fact  on  which  to  pin  the  persistent  optimism  of  man, 
his  courage  in  destitution  and  in  death,  his  hope  of 
immortality,  his  confidence  that  the  heart-ties  snapped 
by  the  grave  shall  be  renewed  beyond,  his  determina- 
tion to  work  on  and  on  and  on  always  so  long  as  life 


OVERCOMING   THE   WORLD.  9 

shall  last.  The  essential  bliss  of  paradise  to  the  blest 
is  not  the  things  God  gives  them,  but  God  who  gives 
the  things,  —  their  perpetual  consciousness  that  any 
phase  of  man's  being  can  only  last  because  God  lasts  ; 
that  the  created  soul  itself  could  not  exist  for  a 
moment  unless  underneath  it  were  the  everlasting 
arms  —  that  all  our  intellectual  ideals  and  moral 
standards,  all  the  forms  and  friendships  so  precious 
to  our  hearts,  are  but  so  many  guises  aud  vehicles 
of  the  Divine  Father's  presence,  and  manifestations 
of  His  love.  This  natural  eagerness  of  man  to  acquire 
things  and  persons  is  not  radically  wrong,  but  it  is 
worldly  until  we  acknowledge  that  nothing  can  be 
really  acquired  except  God  and  that  wiiich  God 
vouchsafes.  He  alone  is  our  Shield  and  our  exceed- 
ing great  Reward.  I  suppose  that  after  the  awful 
ordeal  of  deatli,  when  the  human  personality  has  felt 
to  its  very  core  the  shock  and  shiver  of  parting  from 
everything  earthly,  even  from  the  flesh  —  I  suppose 
that  thereafter  not  heaven  itself  could  bring  any 
peace  to  us  unless  we  could  know  and  feel  that  the 
creature's  only  permanence  is  permanence  in  God. 
There  is  but  one  /  A3L 

Cardinal  Borromeo  was  one  day  playing  ball  with 
his  schoolboys,  when  there  came  a  man  who  wished 
to  see  him  because  the  Cardinal  was  famous  for  his 
sanctity.  The  visitor  was  scandalized  to  find  a  saint 
engaged  in  sport,  and  said  to  him  :  "  Sir,  if  this  were 
the  Judgment  Day  what  would  you  do?  "     "Why," 


10  OVERCOMING  THE    WORLD. 

said  the  Cardinal,  "  this  is  the  hour  for  sport.  I  am 
doing  my  duty.  I  should  go  on  playing."  To  have 
that  spirit  is  to  overcome  the  world. 

It  is  a  picturesque  moment  when  the  youth,  in  the 
full  enthusiasm  of  his  natural  vigor,  looks  out  upon 
the  world,  determined  to  subdue  it  and  to  weld  it  to 
his  will.  But  it  is  a  more  beautiful  moment  when 
the  youth  perceives  that  the  true  way  to  that  victory 
is  to  lean  in  strong  humility  on  God  who  made  the 
world.  There  are  occasions  in  every  youth's  life 
when  he  realizes  that  only  God  sustains  him,  —  that 
his  books  are  nothing,  his  companions  nothing,  his 
best  friend  nothing ;  occasions  when  in  his  struggle 
with  temptation,  in  his  yearning  to  know,  in  his  ef- 
forts to  succeed,  he  feels  profoundly  that  unless  it 
be  true  that  God  is  under  him  there  is  and  could  be 
none  to  uphold.  And  there  are  later  occasions  in 
the  full-grown  man's  life  when  in  his  thinking,  his 
affections,  his  acts,  in  his  endeavors  to  bear  the  bur- 
den and  to  master  the  mystery  of  all  this  unintelli- 
gible world  the  man  feels,  to  the  centre  of  his  soul, 
"  My  soul  hangeth  upon  God."  But  the  important 
thing  is  that  we  should  realize  this  not  now  and  then 
in  crises,  but  daily  and  hourly,  —  that  whatever  our 
calling,  our  station,  opportunities,  difficulties,  hopes, 
we  should  be  "  kept  in  the  secret  of  God's  presence," 
—  that  we  should  dare  to  take  all  these  plans  and 
efforts,  these  loves  and  lives  of  ours  up  into  the 
Divine    presence,    consciously   into   that    presence, 


OVERCOMING  THE   WORLD.  11 

there  to  be  winnowed  and  purified  of  all  that  is  bad 
and  false  and  temporary,  and  adjusted  to  the  true. 
Men  and  brethren,  it  is  with  a  deep  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility and  of  privilege  that  I  have  chosen  this 
as  the  theme  of  my  first  sermon  as  your  rector. 
Following  in  the  steps  of  him  who  for  more  than 
eight  years  mhiistered  to  you  so  faithfully,  and  with 
such  distinguished  success,  —  one  who  had  won  your 
hearts  as  well  as  your  respect ;  appreciating  as  I  do 
the  singular  importance  of  the  trust  which  this  cen- 
tral parish  of  our  national  capital  entails  ;  feeling 
keenly  that  I  am  unequal  to  this  thing  unless  Christ 
my  Master  be  behind  and  before  me  with  His  en- 
lightening grace,  —  considering  all  this,  I  have 
wished  to  choose  some  helpful  motto  for  my  work 
among  you  in  the  years  to  come,  —  to  strike  the  key- 
note, to  indicate  the  ideal  purpose  of  the  Christian 
pastor  and  priest  of  souls  here  in  this  sanctuary  of 
the  jNIost  High.  Have  I  not  found  it  ?  Is  there  any 
other  object  in  your  devotions  or  in  my  ministrations, 
any  other  purpose  in  this  building,  than  that  therein 
and  thereby  we  all  should  learn  to  overcome  the 
world  ?  - —  first,  to  discriminate  truly  what  the  bad 
world  is,  where  we  really  touch  it  and  by  it  are 
touched,  and  then,  by  the  grace  and  power  of 
Jesus  Christ,  to  rise  out  of  it  forever  ?  —  to  separate 
forever  the  false  and  fleeting  from  the  abiding  and 
the  true  ?  God  grant  that  we  may  all  of  us,  priest 
and  people  alike,  keep  this  one  end  in  view :  to  real- 


12  OVERCOMING   THE    WORLD. 

ize  His  eternal  Presence  in  the  things  of  earth  and 
humanity.  In  all  our  schemes  of  administration,  in 
our  efforts  to  enlarge  and  unify  and  intensify  our 
work  and  influence,  in  our  metliods  of  Divine  service 
in  prayer  and  praise  and  almsgiving  and  sacrament, — 
God  grant  that  our  one  aim  may  be  to  help  each 
other  to  grasp  the  eternal  aspect  of  everything  in 
time.  That  truth  well  grasped  will  render  this  sanc- 
tuary in  fact  God's  House  to  us,  —  the  consecrated 
avenue  to  His  presence,  and  so  the  gate  of  heaven. 


11. 


FOUR  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  AMERICAN   HISTORY 
AS   TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIAN  IT  Y.i 

And  thou  shalt  remember  all  the  way  which  the  Lord 
thy  God  led  thee  these  forty  years  .  .  .  that  He  might  make 
thee  know  that  man  doth  not  live  by  bread  only,  but  by  every 
word  that  proceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of»  the  Lord  doth 
man  live.  —  Deuteronomy  viii.  "2,  3. 

TT  is  the  custom  of"  Thanksgiving  Day  that  the 
■^  discourse  from  the  pulpit  should  take  a  wider 
range  than  at  other  times  is  usual  in  God's  house. 
Ordinarily  when  we  come  to  church  we  try  to  leave 
the  secular  world  behind  us.  This  visible  sphere  of 
men  and  things  presses  us  so  hard  that  in  self-defence 
we  endeavor,  once  a  week  at  any  rate,  to  get  out  of 
it  for  a  few  hours,  and  to  feel  the  stress  of  the  sphere 
invisible,  whose  claims,  if  less  vociferous  for  the  time 
being,  are  known  to  be  equally  constraining  in  the 
end.  Heaven  and  Hell,  Sin  and  Judgment,  Con- 
science and  Immortality,  God  and  the  Soul,  Christ 
and  Redemption,  —  these  are  the  themes  to  which 
our  attention  is  oftenest  directed  here.  But  on 
Thanksgiving  Day  it  is  otherwise.     The  life  of  this 

1  Thanksgiving  Day  sermon  Jeliveretl  in  St.   John's  Church, 
Washington,  November  28,  1889. 


14      AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

earth,  with  its  physical  wants  and  pleasures,  with  its 
food  for  the  body,  its  stimulus  for  the  mind,  is 
now  laid  open  to  our  contemplation  in  the  presence 
of  the  Eternal  Being  wliose  fatherly  hand  lias  pre- 
pared it  bounteously  for  our  use.  We  are  bidden,, 
not  so  much  to  escape  to  God  out  of  the  world,  as 
to  find  Him  in  it,  and  to  thank  Him  for  it.  And 
forasnmch  as  this  service  of  Thanksgiving  is  made 
by  the  President's  proclamation  u  distinctive  part  of 
the  national  holiday,  we  shall  miss  tlie  whole  pur- 
pose of  the  day  unless  we  take  our  actual  secular 
daily  life  as  citizens  of  this  great  I'opublic,  and  scru- 
tinizing it  in  the  heavenly  light  of  God's  providen- 
tial Fatlierhood,  give  thanks  for  those  present  results 
of  it  whicli  are  plainly  the  outcome  of  God's  care 
for  us. 

Taking  my  clue,  then,  from  this  circumstance,  I  ask 
you  to  consider  with  me  this  morning,  my  friends, 
What  have  we  as  a  nation,  —  as  part  and  parcel  of 
this  eager,  temporal,  earthly  human  race,  spreading 
so  marvellously  and  rapidly  athwart  the  wide  reaches 
of  land  and  ocean,  —  what  have  we  as  a  nation  espe- 
cially to  be  thankful  for  here  at  the  ending  of  this 
nineteenth  century  of  the  era  since  Christ  was  born  ? 
In  a  little  more  than  two  years  we  shall  be  celebrat- 
ing the  fourth  centenary  of  the  discovery  of  America 
by  Christopher  Columbus,  and  already  the  machinery 
for  that  jubilee  is  getting  under  way.  There  will  be 
a  great  blowing  of  horns,  and  hissing  of  steam-whis- 


AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY.      15 

ties,  and  waving  of  banners  on  that  notable  occasion. 
Many  fine  orations  will  be  uttered,  many  astounding 
monuments  displayed  of  the  material  progress  and 
the  secular  ingenuity  which  America  has  manifested 
since  first  to  the  eyes  of  his  exhausted  crew,  that 
were  ready  to  mutiny  and  turn  backward,  tlie  stren- 
uous Genoese  pointed  out  exultantly  the  far,  faint 
features  of  the  western  continent  just  brightening  to 
the  morn.  Nay,  in  addition  to  all  these  natural  in- 
centives to  the  production  of  panegyrics  on  our 
national  success,  there  is  a  special  and  positive  one. 
The  Duke  of  Veragua,  a  lineal  descendant  of  Christo- 
pher Columbus,  is  offering,  from  motives  of  family 
pride,  and  as  president  of  an  association  formed  for 
the  purpose,  a  prize  of  six  thousand  dollars  for  the 
best  literary  work  written  in  any  of  the  principal 
European  languages,  to  celebrate  the  fourth  centenary 
of  the  discovery  of  America.'  This  international 
competition  is  intended,  in  true  Horatian  spirit,  to 
produce  a  literary  monument  more  lasting  than 
bronze,  in  honor  at  once  of  the  great  seaman's  enter- 
prise and  of  the  country  that  he  discovered ;  and 
those  to  whom  will  fall  the  duty  of  awarding  this 
unexampled  prize  will  doubtless  have  their  hands  full 
of  magniloquent  effusions,  vast  in  bulk  and  copious 
in  adjectives.  It  would  be  idle  to  protest  against 
either  the  one  or  the  other.     America  has  acfiieved 

^  And  in  our  own  country  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  proposes^ 
to  offer  two  prizes  of  three  tliousand  dollars  for  a  similar  purpose. 


16      AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

enough  in  these  four  centuries  to  make  the  record  of 
it  bulky,  no  matter  how  terse  the  style,  how  nice  the 
taste  of  the  recorder ;  and  high-sounding  adjectives 
are,  to  say  the  least,  pardonable  when  the  spirit  of 
self-esteem  is  wearing  the  mask  of  esteem  for  one's 
fatherland.  Certainly,  too,  the  history  of  our  last 
dreadful  war  has  sufficiently  attested  that  our  na- 
tional proneness  to  bombast  in  patriotic  talk  is  tem- 
pered when  necessary  by  the  downright  earnestness 
of  patriotic  action.  When  our  English  cousins  twit 
us  with  our  leaning  to  conceited  loquacity  whenever 
American  ideas  and  American  achievements  are  the 
theme  of  conversation,  we  can  point  with  unconcern 
to  the  steadiness  and  brevity  of  American  action, 
botli  Northern  and  Southern,  when  action  was  re- 
quired. Nor  do  I  think  that  even  this  much  of  apol- 
ogy is  necessary  foi"  the  flood  of  encomium  which  our 
approaching  anniversary  is  likely  to  produce.  Even 
if  the  scrutiny  be  keen,  and  the  tests  severe,  few  stu- 
dents of  history  will  deny  that  our  national  achieve- 
ments in  politics,  iu  economics,  in  mechanics,  in  sci- 
ence, and  in  literature  furnish  abundant  materials  for  a 
panegyric  that  would  be  both  enthusiastic  and  true. 

But  as  we  observe  our  national  custom  of  Thanks- 
giving Day  in  the  spirit  that  brings  us  here ;  as  wc 
survey  our  past  history  and  measure  our  present 
progress  in  the  pure  light  of  God's  eternal  Being  and 
Christ's  perfect  Humanity ;  as  we  suifer  the  ideas  of 
conscience  and  duty  —  of  the  personal  soul,  its  sal- 


AMERICAN  TESTIMONY  TO   CHRISTIANITY.      17 

vatiou  and  immortality,  of  the  church  on  earth  and 
the  church  in  heaven  —  to  meet  and  mingle  witli 
our  ideas  of  secuhir  achievement  and  visible  pros- 
perity; as  we  review  our  records  and  examine  our 
consciences  in  somewhat  the  same  spirit,  with  some- 
what of  the  same  purpose  as  actuated  Moses  in  the 
book  of  Deuteronomy,  from  which  my  text  is  taken, 
remembering  all  the  way  which  the  Lord  our  God 
has  led  our  nation  these  four  hundred  years,  to 
humble  us  and  to  prove  us,  to  know  what  was  in  our 
hearts,  whether  we  would  keep  His  commandments 
or  no,  —  then  I  think  that  questions  will  be  asked 
and  answers  Avill  be  given  different  from  any  that  are 
likely  to  appear  in  the  essay  that  wins  the  prize  of 
the  Duke  of  Yeragua.  Not  that  this  higher  stand- 
point will  deprive  our  survey  of  its  causes  for  re- 
joicing. On  the  contrary,  I  believe  that  it  will 
disclose  to  thoughtful  Christian  minds  causes  for 
thanksgiving  far  deeper  and  more  lasting  than  ap- 
pear from  any  other  standpoint  whatsoever ;  but 
unquestionably  the  nature  of  them  will  be  surprising 
to  many  whose  ears  are  tingling  with  the  story  of 
our  national  advancement  and  of  our  material  suc- 
cess. I  believe  that  that  which  the  history  of  these 
United  States  has  proved  and  is  proving  to  the 
minds  of  men  who  are  really  thoughtful  and  really 
conscientious  is  this  above  all  else,  —  the  absolute 
necessity  of  spiritual  ideals  and  religious  methods  to 
meet  the  conditions  of  mankind  as  man. 

9 


18       AMERICAN   TESTIMONY  TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

The  discovery  of  America  seemed  for  a  while  to 
give  to  non-religious  ideals  and  to  the  standards  of 
materialism  a  new  chance  and  a  better  field.  Ma- 
terialism in  the  old  world  had  proved  a  failure,  but 
might  it  not  prove  a  success  in  the  new  world, 
where  it  would  be  free  from  the  trammels  and  un- 
hampered by  the  problems  of  an  effete  civilization  ? 
'Meat  for  the  belly  and  the  belly  for  meats"  had 
not  been  exactly  a  workable  maxim  where  there  was 
not  meat  enough  to  go  round.  But  what  if  it  should 
be  acted  upon  in  a  land  so  large,  so  rich,  so  unoccu- 
pied that  the  whole  problem  could  be  worked  out 
de  novo  ?  Certainly,  the  men  of  faith  in  God  and  sin 
and  immortality  could  have  no  objection  to  having 
the  experiment  tried,  and  the  Almighty  Himself 
seemed  ftivorable.  The  ideas  of  the  extremists  of 
the  French  Revolution  could  not  be  fairly  tested,  it 
was  claimed,  in  the  worn-out  soil  of  Europe.  Let 
them  be  tested  in  America,  then,  where  undoubtedly 
there  was  space  for  them  and  a  virgin  soil ;  where 
they  would  have  all  that  their  advocates  desire,  —  a 
fair  field  and  no  favor.  To-day  that  problem  is  near- 
ing  its  conclusion,  and  the  theme  of  all  themes  on 
Christian  lips  at  our  national  Thanksgiving  Day 
should  be,  that  the  only  answer  to  it  turns  out  to  be 
a  religious  answer.  The  word  of  Moses  to  the  Israel- 
ites long  centuries  before  Christ,  the  word  of  Christ 
Himself  to  the  devil  during  His  temptation  in  the 
wilderness,  is  the  only  word  which  any  conscientious 


AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY.      19 

man  and  thorough  thinker  will  have  to  say  to  the 
hungry  mouths  and  hungrier  hearts  that  look  up  by 
millions  in  our  country  to  their  teachers  and  their 
guides :  "  The  Lord  liath  humbled  thee,  and  suffered 
thee  to  hunger,  and  fed  thee  with  manna  which 
thou  knewest  not,  neither  did  thy  fathers  know ; 
that  He  might  make  thee  know  that  man  doth  not 
live  by  bread  only,  but  by  every  word  that  pro- 
ceedeth  out  of  the  mouth  of  the  Lord  doth  man 
live."  Ls  it  not  a  notable  circumstance  that  this  de- 
monstration of  the  soul  should  be  the  final  outcome 
of  our  new-world  experience,  even  as  it  had  been  of 
the  old? — that  mankind  should  be  forced  to  see  that 
even  the  most  favored  nation  in  the  whole  course 
of  history  cannot  shirk  the  religious  problem,  — 
that  those  who  run  away  from  it  in  the  old  world 
will  meet  it  inevitably  in  the  new  ?  And  to  men 
who  believe  in  Jesus  and  care  for  the  true  welfare  of 
mankind,  is  there  not  here  a  reason  for  thanksgiving 
profounder  than  any  other  ?  It  is  on  this  simplicity 
of  history  that  we  may  build  our  higher  hopes  for 
our  nation.  The  nation's  ideals  cannot  conthme  to 
be  merely  material  and  temporal,  for  its  actual  his- 
tory is  ending  as  history  has  always  ended.  Human 
history,  always  and  everywiiere,  is  a  demonstration 
of  the  futility  of  things  material,  and  of  the  suprem- 
acy of  soul. 

My  contention  is  that  the  new  era  of  these  past 
four  hundred  years  of  American  history  turns  out  to 


20      AMERICAN   TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

be  identical  in  essentials  with  the  old-world  eras  ; 
that  its  burdens  are  the  old  burdens,  its  riddles  the 
old  riddles  ;  and  that  when  those  of  the  New  World 
who  now  are  trying  to  do  without  Christ  find  them- 
selves side  by  side  with  those  who  tried  in  the  Old 
World  to  do  without  Christ,  and  see  the  helplessness 
of  tlieir  plight,  then  the  upright  minds  among  them, 
who  have  hitherto  been  beguiled  bv  the  false  prom- 
ises of  materialism,  will  come  over  to  the  spiritual 
side.  If  the  New  World  had  developed  connnuni- 
ties  peculiarly  just,  or  peculiarly  happy,  or  peculiarly 
wise ;  ^  if  human  society  transplanted  hither  had 
shown  itself  in  forms  nobler,  stronger,  saner,  more 
graceful,  more  intelligent  than  Europe  had  produced  ; 
if  the  old  vices  did  not  spring  up  here  just  as  read- 
ily as  they  do  there  whenever  there  is  occasion  for 
them  ;  if  the  history  of  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome  be- 
fore Christ,^  and  the  history  of  early  and  mediaeval 
and  modern  Europe  after  Christ  had  not  anticipated 
in  substance  every  phase  of  thought  and  feeling  and 
aspiration  and  endeavor  that  mankind  have  mani- 
fested lately  on  this  side  the  ocean  in  their  attempt 
to  solve  the  difficulties,  and  to  reap  the  joys,  and  to 

1  I  am  here  indebted  to  an  article  which  appeared  in  the  London 
"Spectator"  some  months  ago. 

2  Cf.  in  this  connection  tlie  very  remarkable  discovery  of  clay 
tablets  at  Tel-EI-Amarna  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  as  recently 
published  by  Prof.  A.  H.  Sayce,  in  his  address  on  "  Letters  from 
Syria  and  Palestine  before  the  Age  of  Moses."  This  address  of 
Professor  Sayce  was  delivered  at  a  conversazione  of  the  Lancashire 
and  Cheshire  Antiquarian  Society. 


AMERICAN   TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY.      21 

master  the  mysteries  of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 
then,  perhaps,  there  might  have  been  some  plausible 
ground  for  the  claim  of  irreligion  that  in  this  coun- 
try, unspoiled  beforehand  and  free,  there  was  to  be 
something  new  under  the  sun,  —  that  now  at  last  it 
would  be  shown  to  us  that  man  can  live  without 
(jrod  in  the  world ;  that  he  can  control  himself,  and 
frame  wise  laws  and  keep  them,  and  be  generally 
comfortable  on  earth  without  regard  to  heaven  or 
hell.  But  so  it  has  not  been.  The  discovery  of 
America  has  indeed  doubled  the  theatre  of  men's 
struggles,  giving  them  a  wider  domain  and  freer 
scope  to  begin  the  struggle  anew  ;  but  not  only  has 
it  failed  to  contribute  a  single  fresh  ray  of  ideality  to 
man's  lot,  but  it  has  not  lifted  from  his  back  a  single 
one  of  the  old  essential  burdens.  The  civilization  of 
the  New  World,  tested  by  results,  is  no  better,  if  it 
be  no  worse,  than  that  of  the  old.  On  each  side  of 
tlie  Atlantic  certain  characteristics  are,  doubtless, 
specially  developed ;  but  if  you  strike  an  average,  all 
that  can  be  truly  maintained  is  that,  on  the  whole, 
the  fundamental  aspects  of  European  society  have 
been  reproduced  here.  When  civilized  man  had 
once  put  foot  upon  his  Eldorado,  he  could  only  con- 
trive to  make  the  new  materials  into  the  familiar  feat- 
ures of  his  ancient  home.  There  was  the  same  good 
side  of  life,  with  its  pleasures  and  hopes ;  the  bad 
side,  with  its  misery  and  despair.  It  is  claimed  that 
at  any  rate  the  struggle  for  existence  is  lightened 


22      AMERICAN  TESTIMONY  TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

among  us  ;  but  even  this  is  at  bottom  a  mistake. 
This  struggle  is  indeed  made  orderly  among  us ;  it  is 
given  for  a  few  years  more  room ;  the  police  let 
men  have  a  certain  amount  of  tether  before  they  clap 
them  into  prison ;  the  laws  lay  down  clearly  the 
rules  and  limits  of  the  game,  and  these  laws  are 
made  by  the  people  themselves,  instead  of  by  a  priv- 
ileged class.  But,  if  you  examine  it  narrowly,  the 
real  heart  of  the  struggle  for  existence  is  just  as  bit- 
ter and  as  keen  as  of  old.  There  are  the  same 
heartburnings,  the  same  unsatisfied  desires.  Legis- 
lators and  political  economists  and  philosophers  have 
visited  us  with  expectant  eyes ;  but  they  have  found 
here  no  new  medicine  for  the  Old-World  pain  ;  only 
the  same  ignorance  in  the  poor  man  of  the  things  of 
this  world  ;  only  the  same  ignorance  in  the  rich  man 
of  the  things  of  the  next  world  ;  only  the  same  per- 
sistent effort  on  the  part  of  both  rich  and  poor  to 

"  Build  themselves  they  know  not  what 
Of  other  life  they  know  not  where." 

Vexed  and  disappointed,  such  visitors  could  only 
agree  with  our  own  wiser  observers,  echoing  the 
words  of  King  Solomon  :  "  Vanity  of  vanities,  all  is 
vanity !  What  profit  hath  a  man  of  all  his  labor  which 
he  taketh  under  the  sun  ?  The  thing  that  hath  been, 
it  is  that  which  shall  be ;  and  that  which  is  done  is 
that  which  shall  be  done.  Is  there  anything  of 
which  it  may  be  said.  See,  this  is  new  ?  " 


AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY.      23 

Does  this  seems  to  you  a  gloomy  conclusion? 
Nay,  I  say  that  to  the  Christian  there  is  ground  in 
it  for  profoundest  thanksgiving.  Mankind  has  in- 
deed tried  every  possible  recipe  for  its  ills  save  one, 
and  that  is  no  longer  new,  even  the  gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ  our  Saviour.  And  I  say  that  the  history  of 
the  world  so  far  has  been  a  reductio  ad  absurdum  in 
proof  of  Christianity.  The  world  is  bound  to  find 
out  that  what  Christ  said  is  true,  —  that  there  is  no 
help  for  it  but  spiritual  help  ;  that  even  the  problem 
of  man's  earthly  being  is  at  bottom  not  merely  a 
financial  problem,  nor  an  educational  problem,  nor  a 
social  problem  ;  that  it  is  also  a  religious  problem, 
a  question  of  the  Golden  Rule,  as  amplified  in  the 
Gospel  of  this  morning's  service.  No  man  ever  has 
obeyed  or  ever  will  obey  consistently  that  rule,  "Do 
unto  others  as  ye  would  they  should  do  unto  you, " 
except  from  religious  motives ;  and  the  only  sufficient 
religious  motive  wherewith  to  meet  the  difficulties 
and  the  dangers  of  our  nineteenth-century  civilization 
is  the  motive  that  Christ  presented  for  the  similar 
conditions  of  civilization  when  ancient  paganism  was 
waning.  And  when  of  our  modern  pagans  the  nobler, 
devouter  spirits  shall  recognize  this  at  last,  will  they 
not  hasten  to  join  with  us  in  our  national  Thanksgiv- 
ing Day?  Will  they  not  count  it  worth  all  their 
travail  and  all  their  disappointment  that  it  should 
have  been  thus  driven  into  their  souls  by  sheer  ex- 
haustion of  all  other  methods,  that  the  reason  why 


24      AMERICAN  TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

we  cannot  make  a  better  thing  of  life  is,  not  that  the 
world  is  too  small  or  life  too  short,  but  that  we  are 
too  bad  ?  that  if  our  nation  had  twenty  times  as 
much  room,  and  never  so  many  fresh  starts,  we 
should  still  fail  to  reconstruct  society  on  a  better 
plan  unless  we  should  adopt  a  better  process  ?  Only 
by  spiritual  measures  can  true  human  progress  be ; 
and  for  such  measures  one  hemisphere  is  as  good  as 
the  other,  one  age  as  good  as  any  other.  I  am  glad 
that  all  our  problems  are  fast  resolving  themselves 
into  the  social  problem,  for  that  is  always  a  religious 
problem  at  the  last.  Pessimism  or  Christianity  is  tiie 
only  alternative  then.  Even  the  greatest  happiness 
of  the  greatest  number  is  found  to  be  a  mean  and 
miserable  ideal,  unless  the  idea  of  happiness  blend 
with  the  idea  of  eternal  duty  to  the  Eternal  Father, 
by  whose  grace  we  are  saved.  Christianity  is  the 
absolute  religion.  The  Agnosticism  of  to-day  is  but 
the  classic  Stoicism  in  another  guise ;  the  Positivism 
of  to-day  is  but  a  new  version  of  the  older  Pyrrhon- 
ism ;  ^  and  over  against  them  stands  the  religion  of 
"  Jesus  Christ,  the  same  yesterday,  and  to-day,  and 
forever." 

My  brethren,  have  our  thoughts  to-day  been  too 
far  away  from  the  lines  of  our  personal  religion  ;  too 
far  away  for  thanksgiving,  which  is  only  real  when  it 
is  personal  ?     To  me  it  seems  not  so.     For  can   any 

^  See  Encycl.  Brit.,  articles  Stoicism,  Scepticism. 


AMERICAN   TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITV.     25 

man  be  really  patriotic  and  really  Christian  without 
sitting  down  sometimes,  like  Daniel  in  captivity,  and 
pondering  on  the  welfare  of  his  people  ?  Especially 
in  this  capital  of  our  country,  does  not  the  thought 
of  our  nation  become  to  all  of  us  more  or  less  a  part 
of  our  personal  concern  ?  And  if  in  the  providential 
issues  of  our  national  history  we  can  see  causes  for 
hope  that  the  spiritual  and  the  Christian  side  of 
things  must  in  time  get  a  stronger  and  stronger  hold 
upon  the  national  soul,  shall  we  not  find  in  this  true 
cause  for  personal  rejoicing  ? 

And  there  is  another  reason  which  seems  to  me  to 
give  to  our  theme  a  direct  bearing  on  our  individual 
soul-life.  In  this  result  of  our  national  history  have 
we  not  a  parallel  to  the  personal  history  of  most 
Christian  souls  ?  In  every  generation  there  are  in- 
deed a  few  who  at  no  period  of  their  life  get  far 
away  from  God  ;  but  most  of  us,  as  we  look  into  our 
hearts,  know  only  too  well  that  we  did  not  put  our 
present  faith  in  God  until  we  had  first  put  faith  in 
many  things  beside  God.  Only  when  our  rash  ex- 
periments proved  unsuccessful ;  only  when  we  found 
the  world's  pleasures  to  be  unsatisfying,  and  the 
world's  supports  untrustwortliy,  did  we  come  to  say 
with  Saint  Augustin,  "  TIiou  has  made  us  for  Thyself, 
0  God ;  and  the  heart  is  restless  until  it  rests  in 
Thee."  Hence  I  am  sure  that  for  us  this  morning  to 
have  dwelt  upon  the  issues  of  our  national  history 
was  also  to  verify  the  course  of  each  man's  secret 


26      AMERICAN   TESTIMONY   TO   CHRISTIANITY. 

soul-life  ;  so  that  the  springs  of  our  national  thanks- 
giving will  blend  insensibly  with  those  deeper  springs 
of  joy  that  belong  to  our  hopes  of  personal  salva- 
tion, —  to  our  faith  in  a  personal  God  and  a  personal 
Saviour  that  grows  clearer  and  clearer  as  the  years 
goby. 


III. 

THE  END  OF  HUMAN  LIFE.^ 

Then  cometh  the  end.  .  .  .  that  God  may  be  all  in  all.  — 
1  Cor.  XV.  24,  28. 

TOURING  this  season  of  Advent,  according  to  the 
"^^^  ancient  custom  of  the  Church,  the  preacher  is 
expected  to  present  to  his  people  the  subject  of  the 
Four  Last  Things  :  Death,  Judgment,  Heaven,  Hell. 
We  who  are  so  occupied  by  present  \asible  activities 
and  engagements,  and  by  obvious  enjoyments  and 
sorrows,  are  called  upon,  once  a  year  at  any  rate, 
to  consider  the  results  of  our  activity,  to  notice 
whither  we  are  tending,  to  think  of  our  latter  end 
and   the   real   object   of  our   being. 

And  surely  this  call  is  in  strict  accord  with  the 
demands  of  our  better  being.  Every  man  of  light 
and  leading  who  has  fairly  settled  into  life  puts  be- 
fore himself  some  end,  —  a  certain  aim  and  object  of 
existence.  Life  is  too  short,  too  various,  too  full  of 
chance  and  change  for  strong  and  strenuous  men  and 
women  to  be  willing  merely  to  drift.  Nor  is  it 
simply  an  aim  that  man  needs  :  he  requires  also  a 
1  Advent  sermon. 


28  THE   END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE. 

limit.  We  finite  creatures  must  not  only  be  content 
to  be  bounded  in  our  faculties :  our  labors  must 
likewise  be  bounded.  To  attempt  too  much  is  al- 
most as  bad  as  to  attempt  nothing.  Just  as  each 
day  is  rounded  off,  so  that  when  we  rise  in  the  morn- 
ing we  are  sure  that  the  day  will  terminate,  and  its 
cares,  its  pleasures  stop,  even  so  our  lives  as  a  whole 
could  be  neither  healthy  nor  hearty  unless  we  could 
carry  about  with  us  the  constant  conviction  :  "  This 
state  of  things  will  not  last  forever.  By  and  by 
Cometh  the  end." 

Now  as  the  Bible  is  tlie  Book  of  Life  it  is  natural 
that  we  should  turn  to  it  for  information  on  this  very 
inportant  matter,  as  to  what  is  the  end  of  human  ex- 
istence. And  it  is  very  striking  that  the  answer  to 
this  question  is  both  definite  and  indefinite  accord- 
ing to  our  point  of  view.  Looking  at  things  from  a 
physical  standpoint,  the  reply  is  indefinite  ;  whereas 
from  the  spiritual  standpoint  it  is  definite  and  clear. 
If  we  indulge  ourselves  in  curiosity  as  to  the  duration 
of  this  earth,  or  the  course  of  human  events  on  it, 
although  the  Scriptures  do  contain  some  hints  and 
indications,  still  all  is  so  ambiguous  that  we  cannot 
be  sure  of  our  interpretation  of  the  prophecy  until 
after  the  event.  But  whereas  the  Word  of  God 
leaves  us  thus  in  the  dark  as  to  the  end  of  human 
fc  life  looked  at  from  the  physical  standpoint,  from  the 
spiritual  standpoint  its  answers  to  our  inquiry  are 
often  startling  in  their  definiteness.     And  if  we  were 


THE   END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE.  29 

to  search  the  Scriptures  through,  noting  carefully  the 
replies  to  this  oft-repeated  query  of  anxious  souls, 
"  What  is  the  spiritual  end  and  limit  of  human  being 
and  endeavor  ?  "  we  should  find  that  they  may  be 
all  summed  up  in  our  text  this  morning  from  Saint 
Paul :  "  Then  cometh  the  end.  .  ,  ,  that  God  may 
be  all  in  all." 

You  will  recognize  it  as  part  of  that  magnificent 
chapter  from  which  is  taken  the  Lesson  in  our  Prayer- 
Book  Office  for  the  Dead.  At  that  solemn  moment 
when  we  gather  about  the  coffin  of  the  departed,  ere 
yet  decay's  effacing  fingers  have  swept  the  lines  of 
beauty,  although  we  know  that  all  the  dear  one  had 
of  visible  bodily  being  is  snapped  and  shivered  ;  at 
that  moment,  when  the  most  reckless  of  us  nmst 
feel  the  littleness  and  the  shortness  of  earthly  aims, 
and  when  even  the  serious  and  devout  are  tempted 
to  find  the  consolations  of  God  small  with  them  as 
they  try  to  say  submissively  "  the  last  and  long  good- 
by,"  —  at  this  moment  of  all  others  the  Church,  by 
the  word  of  the  apostle  Paul,  beckons  us  away  from 
all  selfish  and  temporal  considerations  up  into  a 
higher  plane,  where  in  the  calm  light  of  eternity  we 
perceive  the  end,  the  goal,  the  limit  of  every  creature, 
whether  of  things  in  heaven  or  of  things  in  earth, 
namely,  the  simple  and  uncompromising  fulfilling  of 
the  Creator's  will.  The  law  which  holds  together 
the  natural  world  is  what  we  call  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion ;  and   the   law   which   holds    the   supernatural 


30  THE  END  OF  HUMAN  LITE. 

world  together  is  the  gravitation  of  the  created  will 
to  the  Creator's  will.  That  is  the  mystery  of  this 
world  ;  that  is  the  purpose  of  your  life  and  of  mine, 
yea,  and  of  our  Divine  Brotlier  Christ's  life  also,  — 
"  that  God  may  be  all  in  all."  "  But,"  as  the  context 
explains,  "  every  man  in  his  own  order :  Christ  the 
firstfruits  ;  afterward  they  tliat  are  Christ's  at  His 
coming.  Then  cometh  the  end,  when  He  [Christ] 
shall  have  put  down  all  rule  and  all  authority  and 
power.  For  Christ  must  reign  till  He  hath  put  all 
things  under  His  feet.  The  last  enemy  that  shall  be 
destroyed  is  death.  For  He  [the  Father]  hath  put 
all  things  under  Him  [the  Son].  But  when  He  saith 
all  things  are  put  under  Him,  it  is  manifest  that  He 
is  excepted  which  did  put  all  things  under  Him. 
And  when  all  things  shall  be  subdued  unto  Him 
[the  Son],  then  shall  the  Son  also  Himself  be  subject 
unto  Him  [the  Father]  that  put  all  things  under 
Him  [the  Son],  that  God  may  be  all  in  all. " 

And  what  I  wish  especially  to  think  of  with  you 
to-day,  my  friends,  is  this :  how  strangely  and 
closely  this  view  of  the  end  of  things  bears  on  the 
present  process  of  things,  on  our  life  from  hour  to 
hour.  I  suppose  there  was  never  a  period  in  history 
when  so  many  clever  and  practical  people  were  in 
doubt  as  to  what  they  were  really  meant  for.  In 
earlier  times  human  life  was  not  so  complicated,  nor 
nearly  so  self-conscious  and  introspective.  A  great 
many  more  things  were  taken  for  granted.     It  was 


THE  END   OF   HUMAN  LIFE.  31 

"  Like  father,  like  son,"  —  one  person  being  quite  con- 
tented to  receive  on  his  shoulders  his  predecessor  s 
mantle  and  to  go  on  with  his  predecessor's  tasks. 
There  was  not  so  much  intellectual  and  moral  hair- 
splitting. Just  as  there  was  less  subdivision  of  la- 
bour, so  also  there  was  less  anxiety  as  to  special 
vocations  and  as  to  the  final  significance  of  life.  But 
now  civilization  is  telling  on  the  masses.  We  are 
painfully  self-conscious  and  self-important.  We  find 
it  as  hard  to  be  simple  in  our  thinking  and  feeling 
as  we  do  to  be  simple  in  our  living.  Yet  if  once  we 
accept  this  strong  and  healthy  message  of  Saint  Paul, 
what  a  counteractive  we  shall  have  to  these  morbid 
tendencies ;  what  an  open,  simple  thing  all  human 
life  is  seen  to  be ;  how  frank  and  unfettered  its  ideal. 
A  person  may  be  in  doubt  as  to  whether  he  lias 
scope  for  his  best  talents  ;  he  may  even  be  sure  that, 
if  circumstances  had  been  different,  he  might  have 
done  something  else  much  better  than  he  now  is 
doing  what  happens  to  be  his  task.  But  what  of  it  ? 
If  Saint  Paul's  view  be  accepted,  what  difference  does 
it  make  if,  in  the  mingled  maze  of  human  endeavors, 
a  man  has  not  quite  hit  it  off  as  he  intended  ?  At 
any  rate  he  can  "  do  the  next  thing."  At  any  rate  he 
can  turn  his  hand  willingly  and  healthfully  to  what 
he  now  finds  to  do,  in  the  certain  faith  that  God  is 
back  of  all,  and  all  in  all.  God  does  not  need  us  for 
what  we  might  have  done  ;  He  will  arrange  other- 
wise for  that.     God  needs  us  for  what  we  now  can 


32  THE   END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE. 

do ;  aud  by  thus  humbly  complying  with  His  pres- 
ent will  we  are  not  only  doing  that  wliich  now  is 
best  for  us,  but  we  are  doing  essentially  what  under 
any  circumstances  would  always  have  been  best  for 
us,  and  we  are  actually  lifting  our  souls  towards  the 
final  consummation  of  all  things.  "  Then  cometh 
the  end.  .   .  .  that  God  may  be  all  in  all. ' 

In  one  of  the  Sacred  Books  of  the  East  a  great 
Muslim  teacher  relates  this  parable  :  — 

"  One  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  Beloved,  and  a 
voice  from  within  said,  '  Who  is  there  ? '  Then  he 
answered,  '  It  is  I.'  The  voice  replied,  '  This  house 
will  not  hold  me  and  thee ! '  80  the  door  remained 
shut.  The  lover  retired  to  a  wilderness,  and  spent 
some  time  in  solitude,  fasting,  and  prayer.  One  year 
elapsed,  when  he  again  returned,  and  knocked  at  the 
door.  '  Who  is  there  ? "  said  the  voice.  The  lover 
answered,  '  It  is  thou.''     Then  the  door  opened." 

In  his  quaint  but  subtile  imagery  the  Oriental 
teacher  was  but  enforcing  the  very  lesson  of  our  text. 
In  Heaven  is  no  room  for  divers  wills,  unless  all  by 
love  are  one.  Christianity  has  indeed  revealed  to  us 
the  dignity  and  the  inestimable  value  of  the  single 
soul,  and  that  truth  was  the  starting-point  of  our 
modern  civilization  ;  but  let  us  not  misunderstand 
the  truth,  nor  twist  it  from  its  bearings.  Each  soul  is 
only  valuable  because  Almighty  God  is  great  enough 
and  good  enough  to  understand  and  care  for  innu- 
merable finite  creatures ;  and  any  particular  creature 


THE   END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE.  33 

can  only  realize  its  value  by  realizing  God's  will  for 
it.  As  the  chisel  is  powerless  by  itself  to  carve 
the  statue,  but  is  fraught  with  power  and  genius 
when  wielded  by  the  sculptor's  hand ;  so  man,  by 
putting  himself  into  the  hand  of  God,  becomes  more 
and  more  filled  with  His  strength,  till  God  is  all  in 
all.  My  brethren,  the  students  of  natural  science 
have  taught  us  many  things  for  which  we  Christians 
should  be  thankful,  for  they  have  helped  to  make 
manifest  how  closely  our  religion  is  in  touch  with 
natural  life,  "  all  things  working  together  for  good  to 
them  that  love  God."  Lately  by  independent  methods 
these  investigators  have  brought  us  round  to  the  old 
Mosaic  dogma  of  the  unity  of  nature.  At  present 
all  forms  of  force  and  all  departments  of  physical 
life,  as  science  touches  them,  seem  to  show  forth  the 
ideality  of  their  law.  And  the  revelation  of  our 
text  takes  up  the  thread,  and  carries  it  farther.  Here 
we  have  the  law  whereby  all  forms  and  phases  of 
spiritual  being  are  identical  in  their  relation  to  God. 
This  gives  spiritual  oneness  to  our  conception  of 
human  life,  as  natural  science  gives  it  physical  one- 
ness. We  know,  for  example,  that  almost  every- 
where we  are  treading  on  the  traces  of  extinct 
civilizations.  The  pioneer  of  our  western  prairies, 
the  settler  in  Australia,  the  daring  discoverer  in  arctic 
seas,  used  to  fancy  in  his  ignorant  enthusiasm  that 
he  was  the  first  to  bring  the  torch  of  human  enlight- 
enment to  these  benighted  places.     Such  self-impor- 

3 


34  THE  END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE. 

taut  dreams  are  now  dispelled.  We  know  that  torrid 
and  temperate  zones  are  shifting,  and  long  ago  have 
shifted  ;  that  what  is  now  an  ice-bound  coast  was 
once  balmy  and  splendid  with  tropical  luxuriance  ; 
and  if  we  do  but  scratch  the  soil,  we  find  marks  and 
skeletons  and  tombs  of  by-gone  civilizations.  Intelli- 
gence and  will  and  personality  —  the  brain  that 
ponders,  the  hand  that  executes,  and  the  heart  that 
loves  —  are  very  ancient.  They  had  left  their  traces 
here  before  we,  and  all  that  we  have  record  of,  had 
begun  to  be.  So  much  we  learn  from  science.  But 
the  Bible  tells  us  more.  The  Bible  reveals  to  us  the 
spiritual  side  of  the  spectacle,  and  the  spiritual  iden- 
tity of  all  conscious  created  being,  —  "  the  whole 
creation  groaning  and  travailing  in  pain  together  un- 
til now."  Wherever  and  whenever  it  may  be  ;  pass- 
ing and  repassing,  emerging  and  vanishing  ;  one  race 
succeeding  another,  one  civilization  rising  up  out  of 
the  ruins  of  another,  and  destined,  like  the  other, 
itself  to  pass  away,  —  howsoever  the  created  spirit 
may  vary  in  its  accidents  and  superficial  phases,  as  it 
lies  wide  open  to  the  view  of  its  Creator,  the  sub- 
stantial aspect  of  it  never  varies.  Its  end  is  always 
the  same.  Time  has  nothing  to  do  with  it.  The 
cycles  and  vicissitudes  of  history  do  not  change  it. 
The  success  of  one  creature,  the  failure  of  another ; 
the  celebrity  of  one,  the  obscurity  of  another ;  this 
spirit's  Joy,  that  spirit's  sorrow,  —  all  these  do  not  in- 
terfere with  the  underlying  law.     The  point  of  the 


THE  END   OF   HUMAN  LIFE.  35 

spectacle,  the  clue  to  the  mystery,  lies  elsewhere  ; 
and  when  once  we  grasp  that  clue,  then  there  is  such 
unity  in  all  the  multiplicity  that  even  time  and  eter- 
nity are  seen  to  be  as  one.  Each  passing  moment 
is  in  touch  with  eternity.  For  the  end  of  all  things 
is  always  at  hand ;  that  God  may  be  all  in  all,  — 
that  each  created  being  should  do  the  Creator's  will, 
precisely  that,  nothing  else  but  that,  from  moment  to 
moment.  Failing  that,  the  creature  misses  its  goal ; 
so  far  forth  as  it  arrives  at  that,  it  rises  out  of  time 
into  eternity,  for  the  end  is  come.  It  is  not  easy. 
For  sinners  it  cannot  be  easy,  as  the  Christ-life  shows. 
The  only  perfect  jNIan  that  ever  walked  this  earth 
had,  for  our  sakes,  to  go  through  an  agony  in  order 
to ,  accomplish  it ;  and  Christ's  disciples  must  also 
agonize  in  their  effort  to  imitate  Him.  But  believe 
me,  that  cry  which  to  Jesus  was  for  our  sakes  agony 
as  he  uttered  it  in  the  gloom  and  sweat  of  Geth- 
semane,  will  in  Heaven  be  transformed  into  the  joy- 
ful hymn  of  the  redeemed :  "  Father,  not  ]My  will, 
but  Thine  be  done." 

0  my  brothers,  we  often  find  it  hard  to  realize  the 
scenery  of  Heaven ;  and  because  we  cannot  make  ac- 
tual to  ourselves  the  allegories  of  Scripture  we  some- 
times become  almost  sceptical  as  to  paradise,  and  the 
world  to  come,  and  the  Beatific  Vision  of  the  Al- 
mighty, our  Eternal  Father.  Yet  if  the  allegories  of 
the  Bible  do  not  help  us  in  this  unimaginative  age, 
why  do  we  take  no  heed  of  the  downright  statements 


36  THE   END   OF   HUMAN  LITE. 

of  the  Bible,  shorn  of  all  allegory  ?  If  the  language  of 
the  Apocalypse  estranges  us,  why  may  we  not  take 
comfort  in  the  language  of  Saint  Paul  ?  If  we  can- 
not see  in  a  vision,  as  Saint  John  saw  it,  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth  and  the  new  Jerusalem, 
where  there  shall  be  no  more  death,  neither  sorrow 
nor  crying,  neither  shall  there  be  any  iliore  pain  ;  if 
we  cannot  imagine  ourselves  like  harpers  harping 
with  their  harps ;  if  we  fear  we  should  grow  weary  if 
called  upon  to  rest  not  day  and  night  saying,  "  Holy, 
Holy,  Holy  !  "  —  if,  I  say,  all  these  prophetic  visions 
seem  to  us  too  unlifelike  to  be  practically  a  helpful 
forecast  of  that  eternal  existence  for  which  we  hum- 
bly hope,  why,  then,  do  we  not  at  least  take  notice 
of  such  plain  and  positive  statements  as  this  one  of 
our  text,  —  statements  which  sweep  away  the  notion 
that  heaven  will  be  essentially  so  different  from 
earth ;  statements  which  attest  that  the  life  of  faith- 
ful souls  hereafter  will  be  identical  with  that  of 
faithful  souls  iiere,  varying  only  in  the  perfection  of 
its  service  and  the  consciousness  thereof?  For  ac- 
cording to  the  doctrine  of  Saint  Paul,  there  is  an  eter- 
nal aspect  to  every  whit  of  time,  because  the  funda- 
mental relation  of  the  soul  to  God  is  the  same  here 
as  hereafter.  Other  features  of  our  present  being 
are  but  the  accidents  of  life,  its  methods,  tools,  op- 
portunities. These  vary  for  us.  But  the  substance 
of  our  being  hath  no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of 
turning.     Each  one  of  us  stands  simply  before  God, 


THE   END   OF   HUMAN   LIFE.  37 

as  creature  before  Creator,  our  one  duty  being  to  feel 
the  play  and  counterplay  of  the  human  will  in  us 
with  the  Divine  will  of  our  Father ;  and  the  inten- 
tion, the  limit  of  our  being  is  to  yield  up  our  own  will 
to  God's  wiser,  stronger  will.  Until  we  do  this,  the  end 
will  not  have  come.  In  proportion  as  we  do  it,  even 
though  He  slays  us,  still  trusting  in  Him,  our  life  on 
earth  approximates  to  heaven.  The  present  flies 
from  me  ;  the  past  does  not  belong  to  me ;  the  future 
is  not  in  my  power  ;  but  in  the  past,  in  the  present, 
in  the  future  is  my  God,  —  mine  to  know,  mine  to 
love,  mine  to  cling  to,  mine  to  rest  upon.  Towards 
Him  I  gravitate  always.  And  in  that  act  whereby, 
with  the  whole  force  of  my  God-given  personality,  I 
rise  and  bow  my  will  to  God's  will,  recognizing 
Him,  adoring  Him,  performing  His  present  behest,  — 
in  that  one  act  I  go  beyond  the  changes  and  chances 
of  time  into  the  steadfastness  of  eternity.  I  am  do- 
ing now  that  which,  by  my  Saviour's  mercy,  I  shall 
do  forever  and  ever.  "  Then  cometh  the  end.  .  .  . 
that  God  may  be  all  in  all." 


IV. 

ALL   SAINTS'   DAY   SERMON. 

These  all  died  in  faith,  .  .  .  and  confessed  that  they  were 
strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the  earth.  —  Hebrews  xi.  13. 

THIS  is  All  Saints'  Day,  and  my  text  is  taken 
from  Saint  Paul's  account  of  the  character  of 
the  saints.  Like  a  great  artist  who  portrays  by  a  few 
brilliant  strokes  of  his  brush  the  salient  features  of 
his  model,  the  Apostle  presents  to  us,  unconfused  by 
elaborate  details,  a  magnificent  series  of  portraits  of 
the  Old  Testament  worthies.  There  is  Abel,  with  the 
smoke  of  his  sacrifice  going  up  Godward  under  the 
blue  sky  in  the  earliest  age  of  the  world.  There  is 
Noah,  prudently  building  his  ark  years  before  there 
were  signs  in  the  visible  heavens  of  the  gathering 
flood.  There  is  Abraham,  turning  his  back  on  his 
earthly  fatherland,  and  going  in  quest  of  God.  There 
is  Moses,  refusing  to  be  a  prince  in  Egypt,  and  choos- 
ing rather  to  lead  an  ignoble  race  of  slaves  into  the 
desert  that  should  render  them  freemen.  These  and 
many  like  figures  rise  before  us  in  this  striking  chapter 
of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  As  we  stand  musingly 
in  this  strange  portrait-gallery,  the  Apostle's  statement 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  39 

that  we  and  those  men  are  brothers  seems  to  us  im- 
possible. Is  not  our  guide  carried  away  by  a  fantastic 
enthusiasm  ?  Where  is  the  likeness  between  us  and 
those  august  heroes  of  an  earlier  world  ?  What  por- 
tion have  we  in  David  ?  neither  have  we  inheritance 
in  the  son  of  Jesse.  We  are  doing,  we  can  do  no 
such  deeds  as  did  these  saints  of  old.  We  raise  no 
altars  under  the  open  sky,  and  slay  no  firstlings  of  the 
flock.  No  voice  calls  us  to  any  ark-building ;  no  mes- 
sage of  self-exile  do  we  hear,  that  we  may  find  our- 
selves and  find  our  God  in  some  unknown  Palestine  ; 
no  choice  between  the  palace  and  the  wilderness  is 
laid  on  us.  And  yet  if  we  look  longer  at  our  por- 
trait-gallery, if  we  hearken  to  oiu"  inspired  instructor's 
explanation  of  the  meaning  and  the  motives  of  char- 
acter of  those  old-time  heroes,  we  cannot  but  recog- 
nize some  traces  of  affinity  between  ourselves  and 
them.  Amidst  our  commonplace  surroundings  and 
our  different  duties  there  are  crises  of  the  soul  not 
unlike  theirs ;  and  in  studying  their  lives  we  may  de- 
rive apposite  suggestions  as  to  how  to  run  our  race, 
to  render  our  service,  and  to  fill  our  places  in  this 
modern  world.  Such  is  our  privilege  this  morning. 
Such  is  the  opportunity  of  All  Saints'  Day.  And  we 
are  drawn  to  it  by  the  strongest  stress  that  this  earth 
knows,  —  by  the  ties  of  heart  and  home.  As  1  look 
over  your  faces,  my  brothers,  in  this  house  of  God 
to-day,  I  know  that  we  are  all  thinking  of  one  thing, 
all  feeling  the  drawing  of  one  cord,  all  standing  in 


40  ALL  SAINTS'   DAY. 

one  line  before  the  same  mysterious  veil,  and  trying 
to  peer  beyond  it,  —  the  veil  that  has  fallen  between 
ourselves  and  the  beloved  ones  that  have  passed  into 
paradise.  We  are  thinking  of  our  dead,  —  no,  not  of 
the  dead,  but  of  those  who  are  asleep  while  their 
heart  waketh,  as  our  hearts  also  wake  and  watch  for 
them.  And  as  we  think  of  them,  we  think  of  others  be- 
yond them  and  before  them.  The  gallery  of  the  dead 
is  very  long.  Our  gaze  begins  with  one  and  another 
of  the  faces  that  we  ourselves  have  known  and  loved ; 
but  anon  our  eye  is  drawn  on  to  other  kindred  spirits 
of  the  society  that  they  have  joined.  The  thought  of 
all  saints  merges  into  the  thought  of  our  saints,  — 
transmutes  it,  lifts  it  up,  makes  us  ready  for  such 
contemplations  as  my  text  to-day  presents  to  us  : 
"  These  all  died  in  faith,  not  having  received  the 
promises,  but  having  seen  them  afar  off,  and  were 
persuaded  of  them,  and  embraced  them,  and  confessed 
that  they  were  strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the  earth." 

It  seems  at  first  sight  singular  that  it  sliould  re- 
quire saints  to  confess  what  everybody  knows,  —  that 
it  should  be  an  essential  mark  of  sainthood  to  con- 
fess that  we  are  strangers  and  pilgrims  on  this  earth. 
Here  we  are,  all  eye-witnesses  to  the  perpetual  proces- 
sion of  mankind,  to  the  transitoriness  of  everything 
earthly.  We  see  it,  we  suffer  from  it,  we  ourselves  par- 
take of  it ;  but  the  western  world,  at  any  rate,  does 
not  confess  it ;  that  is,  does  not  admit  it  iu  such  wise 
that  the  admission  becomes  a  genuine  principle  of  our 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  41 

ordinary  activity,  a  vital  motive  of  our  character.  Gen- 
uine confession  is  a  matter  not  merely  of  the  lips,  but 
of  the  life.  To  appreciate  what  the  Apostle  meant 
when  he  said  that  the  saints  "  confessed  "  that  they 
were  pilgrims,  we  must  recall  the  meaning  which  the 
primitive  Christians  put  upon  this  word  "  confessor." 
A  confessor  was  a  martyr  in  all  except  the  deed. 
He  stood  up  before  the  heathen  inquisitor  and  told 
him  the  whole  story,  —  acted  out  his  faith  com- 
pletely ;  only  the  inquisitor,  for  whatever  reason,  did 
not  care  to  go  all  lengths  with  him,  did  not  make 
the  Christian  pay  for  his  faith  with  his  life,  what- 
ever other  sufferings  short  of  this  he  might  undergo. 
Nevertheless,  so  far  as  the  Christian  himself  was 
concerned,  so  far  as  his  own  will  reached,  he  was  a 
martyr.  He  acted  out  his  faith.  Now  when  we  are 
told  that  the  saints  all  "  confessed  "  that  they  were 
strangers  and  pilgrims  on  this  earth,  the  term  con- 
notes a  similar  thoroughness  of  action.  They  did 
not  simply  admit,  as  all  of  us  do,  theoretically  and 
in  the  abstract,  the  transitoriness  of  human  life  ; 
they  lived  up  to  this  admission,  accepted  the  con- 
sequences of  it,  allowed  it  to  mould  their  character 
and  to  modify  their  daily  life. 

I  have  just  remarked  that  the  Western  world  in 
general  does  not  make  this  confession.  In  a  measure 
and  after  a  fashion  the  Eastern  world  does  so.  We 
are  all  more  or  less  familiar  with  the  stolidity  of  the 
Oriental  character ;   but   have   you   ever   sought  to 


42  ALL   SAINTS'   DAY. 

ascertain  the  cause  of  that  stolidity  ?  What  makes 
the  Oriental,  in  contrast  to  the  Westerner,  so  singu- 
larly impassive  ?  The  Russian  on  the  borders  of 
China,  the  Englishman  in  India,  recognizes  this  qual- 
ity of  the  Eastern  civilization  at  once.  He  feels  as  if 
he  had  been  brought  up  against  a  high,  blank  wall. 
And  all  Europe  talks  about  the  ''  inscrutable  Turk." 
What  makes  the  Turk  "  inscrutable "'  to  men  of 
Occidental  mould  ? 

I  think  we  can  best  understand  it  by  drawing 
an  illustrative  parallel.  All  of  us  in  our  impetu- 
ous youth  have  had  the  experience  of  being  con- 
fronted with  the  cool  and  the  calm  of  older  men. 
We  have  rushed  forward  full  of  theories  and  ex- 
pedients and  enthusiasms,  ready  to  accomplish  won- 
ders off-hand.  There  were  certain  magic  watchwords 
always  on  our  lips,  — ^such  as  "  Progress,"  "  Enlight- 
enment," "  Reform ;  "  and  we  had  no  hesitation  in 
upsetting  things  generally  in  the  name  of  such  ideas. 
I  am  not  saying  that  we  were  all  wrong.  On  the 
contrary,  I  am  sure  that  we  were  half  right,  and  that 
the  world  is  in  constant  need  of  just  such  as  we 
were,  and  that  in  every  generation  there  are  abundant 
proofs  that  youth  with  its  ideals  can,  not  only  mar,  but 
mend.  Alas  for  the  youth  who  is  not  full  of  ideals, 
and  whose  bravery  does  not  verge  on  rashness.  Na- 
poleon used  to  say  that  no  field-marshal  of  his  ever 
won  a  great  charge  after  thirty,  which  was  but  an 
epigrammatic  way  of  emphasizing  the  importance  of 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  43 

zeal,  and  the  necessity  that  maturer  men  should 
recognize  that  they  require  for  their  own  prosperity 
the  assistance  which  youth  alone  can  yield.  But  all 
this  is  aside  from  my  present  point.  What,  I  ask 
you,  is  it  that  makes  mature  age  seem  cold  and 
stolid  to  the  young?  Is  it  not  timt  in  many  ways 
old  age  knows  better  what  you  can  get  out  of  a 
given  life  ;  what  human  life  and  personality  amount 
to  ;  what  can  be  done  and  cannot  be  done  by  any  one 
of  us,  or  by  any  single  generation  of  us,  before  we  go 
hence  and  are  no  more  seen  ?  It  is  not  merely  that 
old  age  has  slacker  sinews  and  chillier  blood  ;  it  is 
partly  because  the  maturer  man's  view  of  things  is 
deeper  and  longer  and  wider.  Youth  has  seen  so 
little  happen  ;  old  age  has  seen  so  much. 

Somewhat  such  is  the  attitude  of  the  East  in 
general  towards  the  enthusiastic  and  more  enterpris- 
ing Western  world.  The  Oriental  civilization  is  so 
old.  For  ages  upon  ages  it  has  Avitnessed  the  rise 
and  fall  and  outcome  of  just  such  dreams  and  hopes 
and  efforts  and  experiments  as  the  West  is  now  so 
eager  about,  supposing  them  to  be  new,  —  experi- 
ments in  industry  and  commerce,  in  mechanics  and 
architecture  and  art,  in  politics  and  in  religion.  It  is 
inborn  and  inbred  in  the  Oriental,  as  a  result  of  all 
that  vanished  life  behind  him,  that  "there  is  nothing 
new  under  the  sun."  This  is  the  strain  of  thought 
that  tinges  and  prevails  throughout  those  marvellous 
books   Ecclesiastes   and   the   Wisdom   of  Solomon, 


44  ALL   SAINTS'  DAY. 

which  the  Church  has  incorporated  into  the  Old 
Testament  ;  though  here  you  find  the  Spirit  of  Al- 
mighty God  wrestling  with  the  discouraged  intellect 
of  the  wise  man,  and  trying  to  modify  his  fotalism  by 
the  power  of  a  nobler  and  robuster  faith.  It  is  be- 
cause of  this  evident  battle  between  faith  and  unfaith 
in  a  personal,  beneficent  God,  and  in  the  vital  per- 
sonality of  responsible  manhood,  that  these  strange 
books  have  been  sanctioned  as  part  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture. The  struggle  is  therein  so  depicted  as  to  be 
true  to  the  facts  of  natural  human  soul-life,  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  to  point  onward  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment revelation  of  the  Christ  who  should  after- 
wards supernaturally  appear  to  end  the  struggle. 
We  read  Ecclesiastes  in  the  light  and  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Jesus,  the  strong  Son  of  God,  Immortal 
Love  ;  and  so  to  us  its  pages  are  robbed  of  bane. 
But  if  you  wish  to  see  a  complete  expression  of  the 
influences  which,  apart  from  the  Christian  Revela- 
tion, have  produced  in  the  Oriental  civilization  its 
cast  of  strong  stolidity,  read  the  Rubaiyat  of  Omar 
Kayyahm.     "  Tliink,"  says  the  Persian  poet,  — 

"Think,  in  this  batter'd  Caravanserai 
Whose  portals  are  alternate  night  and  day, 
How  Sultan  after  Saltan  with  his  pomp 
Abode  his  destin'd  hour,  and  went  his  way. 

"  We  are  no  other  than  a  moving  row 
Of  magic  shadow-shapes  that  come  and  go 
Round  with  this  suu-illumin'd  lantern  held 
In  midnight  by  the  Master  of  the  Show. 


ALL  SAINTS'   DAY.  45 

"  Impotent  pieces  of  the  game  He  plays 
Upon  this  checker-board  of  nights  and  days  ; 
Hither  and  thither  moves,  and  checks,  and  slays. 
And  one  bj"-  one  back  in  the  closet  lays. 

*'  The  Ball  no  question  makes  of  Ayes  and  Noes, 
But  right  or  left  as  strikes  the  Player  goes  ; 
And  He  that  tossed  you  down  into  the  field. 
He  knows  about  it  all  —  He  knows  —  He  knows. 

"  And  that  inverted  Bowl  they  call  the  Sky, 
Whereunder  crawling  coop'd  we  live  and  die, 
Lift  not  your  hands  to  It  for  help  —  for  It 
As  impotently  rolls  as  you  or  I." 

But  stolidity  is  not  saintliness.  Intellectual  and 
spiritual  inipassiveness  was  not  the  mark  of  those 
whose  roll  is  called  so  grandly  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews.  When  the  Apostle  says  of  them,  that 
they  too,  like  Omar  Kayyahm,  confessed  that  they 
were  strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the  earth,  he  qualifies 
their  confession  by  the  statement  that  ''  these  all  died 
in  faith,  not  having  received  the  promises,  but  were 
persuaded  of  them  and  embraced  them.  .  .  .  For 
they  that  say  such  things  declare  plainly  that  they 
seek  a  country — a  better  country,  that  is,  an 
heavenly  :  wherefore  God  is  not  ashamed  to  be  called 
their  God :  for  He  hath  prepared  for  them  a  city." 
The  saints  of  Western  Christendom^  have  faced  the 
transitoriness  of  earthly  things  with  quite  as  much 
impassiveness,  in  one  sense,  nay  with  even  more  ini- 
passiveness than  the  Oriental  pagans ;  yet  the  key  to 
their  character  is  not  fatalism,  but  the  profoundest 


46  ALL  SAINTS'  DAY. 

and  most  masterful  confidence,  —  confidence  in  God 
Almighty,  confidence  in  this  world  while  it  lasts, 
confidence  in  their  own  selves.  And  if  you  and  I, 
my  brothers,  are  to  enter  into  the  true  secret  of  our 
All  Saints'  Day,  we  nmst  first  acquire  the  clue  to 
Christian   sainthood. 

What,  then,  is  lacking  to  the  Oriental  temper,  — 
to  the  temper  which  is  no  longer  Oriental  only,  but 
which,  alas !  is  more  and  more  pervading  our  West- 
ern civilization,  also  outside  the  pale  of  Christianity  ? 
How  does  the  saint,  while  recognizing  as  fully  as  the 
most  stolid  of  pagans,  the  fleetingness  of  all  things 
temporal,  contrive  notwithstanding  to  find  therein 
materials  for  permanent  enthusiasm  and  an  indomita- 
ble hope? 

The  answer  is  very  simple.  The  saint  looks  at  this 
earth  as  a  school ;  and  to  his  view  the  important 
matter  is  not  the  perishableness  of  the  school-build- 
ing, but  the  lastingness  of  the  scholar.  The  key  to 
the  saint's  position  is  not  the  school,  but  the  school- 
ing, and  the  immortal  soul  that  here  is  put  to  school. 
Some  shrewd  observers  of  human  character  have  re- 
marked that  there  is  a  certain  resemblance  between 
the  saints  and  true  artists  and  men  of  science  and 
members  of  some  of  tlie  other  higher  professions ; 
and  in  a  certain  sense  this  is  so.  There  is  in  all 
these  a  similar  absence  of  sordidness,  a  similar  aloof- 
ness from  fashionable  concerns,  a  similar  independ- 
ence of  the  changes  and  difficulties  of  our  ordinary 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  47 

earthly  being,  a  similar  interior  joy  fulness.  But 
granting  this  gladly,  and  accounting  for  it  by  the  fact 
that  all  such  persons,  like  the  saints,  are  so  absorbed 
in  a  single  elevated  pursuit  that  they  make  light  of 
matters  which  to  the  rest  of  us  are  weighty,  it  is 
surely  unnecessary  to  say  that  to  such  intellectual 
aloofness  from  the  world  there  must?  be  superadded 
something  different  and  higher  before  the  note  of 
sainthood  is  truly  attained.  This  additional  quality 
is  the  insistence  that  this  earthly  life  of  ours  is  a 
school  for  the  eternal  life,  and  that  God  our  Father 
is  the  Schoolmaster ;  and  that  it  makes  no  matter 
whether  we  outgrow  our  textbooks,  whether  we  de- 
spise our  prizes  as  soon  as  we  have  won  them, 
whether  we  acquire  outwardly  and  objectively  any- 
thing whatever  that  will  stand,  whether  even  the 
place  and  structure  in  which  we  do  our  tasks  is  not 
crumbling  under  our  feet,  inasmuch  as  the  important 
matter  is  simply  wliat  we  ourselves  are  becoming  in 
the  process,  —  what  the  individual  scholars  get  out  of 
their  schooling  in  the  way  of  personal  character. 
Personal  character  is  the  essential  thing,  the  immor- 
tal thing,  and  that  alone  is  the  saint's  concern, — that 
and  the  Holy  God  in  whom  and  from  whom  we 
live  and  move  and  have  our  being.  Pilgrims  we  all 
are  and  strangers  in  this  beautiful  but  passing  scene  ; 
yet  the  passingness  of  the  scene  does  not  discourage 
the  saintly  traveller,  —  does  not  prevent  him  from 
eschewing  that  counterfeit  of  true  sainthood^  the  im- 


48  ALL   SAINTS'   DAY. 

passive  Oriental  stolidity,  which  is  the  proud  stoical 
admission  of  the  truth  as  to  this  world,  without  the 
supplementary  admission  as  to  the  truth  of  the  next 
world  which  Christ  reveals  to  faithful  souls.  It  is 
often  urged  by  unbelievers  that  the  saints  are  im- 
practical persons,  —  that  "  othervvorldliness  "  blinds 
them  to  the  fects  and  issues  of  this  world ;  and  that 
in  consequence  it  is  quite  as  bad  to  be  a  Western 
saint  as  to  be  an  Eastern  stoic,  since  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  one  is  fully  as  unhelpful  here  and  now  as  the 
stolidity  of  the  other.  But  the  unbelievers  miscon- 
ceive the  quality  of  true  sainthood.  Faith  in  eternity 
and  the  eternal  personal  God,  and  the  constant  vision 
of  these,  impart  in  the  saint's  view  a  new  and  posi- 
tive interest  to  all  the  things  of  time.  Nay,  eternity 
not  only  gives  to  time  a  new  value,  ])ut  gives  it  its 
only  value.  Once  admit,  as  all  downright  honest 
souls  must  admit,  the  fleetingness  of  time,  and  time 
loses  its  whole  value  except  as  the  prelude  of  the 
eternity  into  which  it  is  forever  fleeting.  It  is  eter- 
nity, and  eternity  alone,  that  imparts  to  time  its  dig- 
nity. The  Oriental  considers  that  nothing  temporal 
is  worth  making  a  fuss  about ;  the  saint  of  Christen- 
dom goes  thus  far  with  him,  that  he  too  esteems 
earthly  matters  trivial  in  and  for  theniselves  ;  but  the 
saint  insists  that  nevertheless  there  is  real  and  inesti- 
mable worth  in  them  because  of  the  relation  that 
this  world  bears  to  Heaven,  —  that  finite  beings  bear 
to  God  Almighty. 


ALL   SAINTS'   DAY.  49 

Men  and  bretliren,  such  is  the  ideal  that  is  set 
before  you  and  me.  And  it  is  the  power  and  priv- 
ilege of  Christianity  that  it  draws  us  toward  this 
ideal  by  that  very  earthly  tie  that  is  strongest  and 
most  enduring,  —  the  tie  of  pure  human  affection.  It 
is  this  which  All  Saints'  Day  expresses  to  us.  In  the 
great  Coliseum  at  Rome  eighty  thousand  spectators 
lined  the  galleries,  while  a  small  score  of  combatants 
waged  gladiatorial  contests  on  the  ground  below. 
And  Saint  Paul  assures  us  that  somewhat  such  a  thea- 
tre is  the  human  race,  dead  and  living,  save  that  the 
audience  in  the  galleries  is  made  up  largely  of  those 
who  beforehand  were  on  the  floor.  They  have  fought 
their  battle  with  the  beasts,  they  have  run  their  race 
patiently,  and  then  they  have  gone  out  of  the  arena 
into  the  gallery.  You  and  I  have  taken  their  places, 
and  they  are  watching  to  see  how  we  will  profit  by 
the  lesson  which  their  lives  convey  to  us.  Oh  !  if  our 
eyes  would  but  look  at  this  life  as  they  used  to  look 
at  it,  as  they  are  looking  at  it  still  I  If  the  fatlier, 
immersed  in  worldly  affairs  yet  still  loving  the  child 
that  death  has  taken  from  him,  would  but  under- 
stand why  his  little  one  is  tugging  at  his  heart-strings  ! 
If  the  widowed  husband  would  but  understand  what 
his  vanished  wife  is  trying  to  whisper  to  him  in  the 
lonely  night-watches !  If  the  orphan  would  but  hear 
what  his  mother  is  praying  for  him  in  the  earnest 
patience  of  Paradise,  —  not  that  he  may  make  nought 
of  this  life,  or  make  light  of  it,  but  that  he  may  use 

4 


50  ALL   SAINTS'   DAY. 

this  life  as  not  abusing  it.  This  earth  is  not  substan- 
tial ;  the  things  of  earth  are  not  to  be  clutched  and 
kept,  for  they  are  sure  to  slip  away ;  but  they  are 
passing,  not  ive,  —  not  the  immortal  souls  of  our  be- 
loved, not  God  the  High  and  Holy  One  which  in- 
habiteth  eternity,  not  Jesus  our  Elder  Brother,  our 
Pattern  and  our  Stay.  So  into  all  these  transitory 
objects  and  occasions  of  our  life,  into  our  riches  or 
our  poverty,  into  our  work  or  profession  whatever 
they  may  be,  into  the  ties  of  family  and  friendship, 
into  life's  sadness  and  its  gladness,  into  its  most 
evanescent  beauty,  we  can  tln-ow  ourselves  with 
courage  and  zest  and  passion,  because  by  all  these 
we  ourselves  and  our  fellow-men  are  becoming  what 
we  shall  hereafter  be,  —  because  God  is  lierc,  and  w^e 
can  find  Him  here,  and  follow  Him  forever.  Let  us 
too  live  in  that  fiiith  and  die  in  it,  confessing  that  we 
are  strangers  and  pilgrims  on  the  earth. 


A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON. 

And  they  came  with  haste,  and  found  Mary,  and  Joseph, 
and  the  Babe  lying  in  a  manger.  And  when  they  had  seen 
it,  they  made  known  abroad  the  saying  which  was  told  them 
concerning  this  Child.  And  all  they  that  heard  it  wondered. 
—  St.  Luke,  ii.  16,  17. 

/''^HRISTMAS  is  the  great  day  of  joyful  woiider- 
^^— ^  ment.  All  birth  is  wonderful.  In  all  the 
world  the  genesis  of  life  is  marvellous.  It  is  the 
crux  of  science,  the  riddle  of  philosophy,  the  mystery 
of  religion.  Neither  of  the  three  can  explain  it ; 
they  can  but  acknowledge  their  utter  amazement  at 
it.  The  supreme  mystery  t>f  our  existence  is  not 
death ;  it  is  that  we  shoukl  ever  have  begun  to  be. 
And  by  common  confession  Christmas  is  the  birthday 
of  the  most  extraordinary  Person  that  this  world  has 
known  in  the  whole  course  of  its  history.  It  is  but 
to  be  expected,  therefore,  that  man's  sense  of  the 
marvellous  in  all  birth,  as  such,  should  be  intensified 
at  the  birth  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  miraculous  con- 
ception, the  star-led  Magi,  the  heralding  by  Angels, 
the  manger  at  the  inn,  —  all  these  marvels  seem  to 
the  philosophic,  no  less  than  to  the  poetic  eye,  to  be 


52  A   CHRISTMAS    SERMON. 

in  thorough  keeping  with  the  fact  that  we  are  cele- 
brating —  in  thorough  keeping  with  any  birth  of  any 
being  —  if  we  do  but  consider  what  birth  is,  to  say 
nothing  of  His  birth  whose  personality  and  achieve- 
ments and  transcendent  influence  have  transformed 
the  history  of  mankind. 

It  seems  hard  that  on  Christmas  Day,  of  all  days, 
we  should  have  to  stop  and  consider  objections.  But 
alas,  it  is  so.  The  doubts  are  there.  They  are  in 
the  hearts  of  some  of  you,  my  brothers,  who  will 
turn  away  from  the  Lord's  table  this  morning  because 
you  cannot  still  your  doubts,  —  doubts,  too,  not  of 
your  own  making,  but  inspired  by  persons  that  you 
respect.  Woe  be  to  the  preachers  of  the  Gospel  of 
Jesus  Christ  if  they  refrain,  for  any  reasons  of  senti- 
ment or  supposed  pro[)riety,  from  contending  earn- 
estly for  the  faith  once  for  all  delivered  to  us.  The 
days  are  gone  by  when  it  will  do  to  treat  our  Chris- 
tianity as  a  delicate  matter,  a  sentiment,  an  afi^air  of 
fine  feeling.  Hard-headed  thinkers  all  about  us  de- 
cline to  treat  it  in  that  way  any  longer ;  and  if  we 
so  treat  it,  we  may  haply  find  ourselves,  as  Renan 
says  "  living  on  the  perfume  of  a  broken  vase."  To- 
day, then,  and  on  a  subsequent  Sunday  I  shall  con- 
sider two  of  the  most  modern  and  prevalent  objections 
to  the  miraculous  birth  of  Jesus  Christ.  On  a  sub- 
sequent occasion  we  shall  take  up  the  objection  to 
our  Christian  creed  which  comes  from  the  supposi- 
'  tion  that  the  Virgin  Birth  of  Jesus  Christ  is  a  scien- 


A  CHRISTMAS   SERMON.  53 

tific  impossibility  :  and  we  shall  show  that  our  most 
modem  science  declares  the  exact  opposite  of  this ; 
that  science  has  rece.itly  discovered  actual  cases  of 
virgin  birth  in  the  lower  animal  kingdom  in  special 
emergencies.  But  the  objection  to  which  I  ask  your 
attention  td-d  ay  comes  not  so  much  from  physical,  as 
from  historical  science ;  iind  I  choose  it  now  because 
it  can  be  handled  more  briefly,  as  befits  the  special 
services  of  Chi'istmas  Day.  Many  serious  persons, 
well  aware  that  there  is  no  longer  a  valid  scientific 
objection  to  the  dogma  of  the  Virgin  Birth  of  Christ, 
are  nevertheless  troubled  from  another  side.  They 
notice  this  strange  circumstance ;  that  the  general 
impression  which  is  produced  on  us  by  the  religious 
history  of  mankind  is  that  all  religions,  no  matter 
what,  present  us  in  their  origins  with  a  series  of 
miracles.  If  then  the  miracle  is  universal,  is  it  not 
thereby  evacuateo'  of  all  its  weight  ?  Is  it  aught  more 
tiian  an  indication  of  that  proneness  to  aberration 
which  ahvays  characterizes  the  human  imagination 
Avhen  over-excited  by  the  religious  ideal  ?^  Why, 
then,  should  the  Christian  theologian,  who  recoils 
instinctively  from  the  miracles  of  the  mythologies, 
insist  on  making  aa  exception  in  favor  of  the  Gospel 
story  of  the  birth  of  Jesus? 

The  objection  is  a  specious  one,  but  the  history  of 
natural  science  furnishes  us  with  a  suflScient  answer 
to  it.     Natural  science  has  now  resolved  itself  into 
^  Cf.  Bersier,  iJermons,  tome  vii.  p.  185,  seq. 


54  A  CHRISTMAS   SEKMON. 

a  sort  of  expert  conimission  to  investigate  the  testi- 
mony for  the  miracles  that  fall  within  its  province. 
All  nature  is  full  of  the  supernatural,  because  the 
Infinite  Energy  in  nature  is  Itself  above  nature,  — 
super-natural.  Nature  is  a  convenient  term  for  what 
we  already  know  of  this  Infinite  Energy  ;  the  super- 
natural is  our  term  for  what  has  not  yet  come 
exactly  within  our  range.  Nature  is  fiO  marvellous, 
the  frontiers  of  what  has  hitherto  bee  a  regarded,  be- 
cause of  our  ignorance,  as  the  supernatural  are 
being  so  continually  pushed  back  by  our  new  knowl- 
edge of  the  natural,  that  scientific  inquiry  is  now 
become  one  vast  research  into  whatsoever  it  may 
please  the  Infinite  Energy  beliind  nature  to  perform  ; 
and  whenever  a  fresh  revelation  of  ^he  operations  of 
the  Eternal  Energy  is  made  to  some  observer  more 
than  ordinarily  on  tlie  alert,  his  testimony  is  not  dis- 
credited beforehand  because  of  the  careless  observa- 
tions or  the  rash  inferences  of  other  observers,  (iood 
testimony  is  not  invalidated  by  bad.  It  is  the  busi- 
ness of  the  expert  to  sift  the  testimony.  And  if  in 
any  particular  case  the  phenomenon  is  obscure  or 
the  testimony  inadequate,  the  true  man  of  science 
will  neither  affirm  nor  deny,  —  he  simply  suspends 
his  judgment,  and  passes  on  to  the  consideration  of 
other  scientific  phenomena  as  to  M-hich  the  testimony 
is  not  doubtful.  The  astronomer  would  be  a  fool 
who  should  refuse  to  bring  \m  telescope  to  bear 
upon  the  moon  because,  forsocith,  his  glass  is  not 


/ 


r 


A   CHRISTMAS 'sermon.  55 

powerful  enough  to  solve  the  secrets  of  the  star-dust 
that  veils  the  Milky  Way.  Now,  I  assert  without 
fear  of  contradiction  that,  so  far  as  testimony  is  con- 
cerned, the  proof  of  the  accuracy  and  sufficiency  of 
the  Gospel  history  of  Jesus  Christ  is  incomparably 
superior  to  the  best  attainable  testimony  as  to  the 
supposed  facts  of  the  history  of  other  religions  ;  and 
simply  on  scientific  and  historic  grounds,  and  on 
grounds  of  pure  reason,  —  to  say  nothing  of  the 
rules  of  ordinary  living,  —  it  is  sheer  madness  to  shut 
your  eyes  to  the  testimony  for  Jesus  Christ  for  the 
reason  that  you  must  have  doubts  as  to  some  of  the 
testimony  for  Bouddha  or  Mohammed  or  the  mira- 
cles of  Morinonism.  The  wise  and  upright  course 
to  pursue  —  the  only  course  that  is  consistent  with 
the  methods  of  true  manliness  —  is  to  fix  your  mind 
on  the  adequate  testimony  that  is  available  for 
Christianity,  and  not  to  waver  as  you  look  at  it  for 
tlie  reason  that  you  must  waver,  that  at  best  you 
must  be  in  suspense,  with  regard  to  the  testimony  for 
some  other  religion  ;  above  all,  since  the  records  ot 
the  Christ-life  are  more  numerous  and  various  and 
•authentic  than  the  records  which  we  possess  of  any 
one  of  the  great  personages  of  ancient  history,  and  oi 
most  modern  history,  —  since  to  doubt  them  would 
compel  us  to  give  up  our  knowledge  of  Alexander 
and  Julius  Csesar,  of  Socrates  and  Marcus  Aure- 
lius,  and  even  of  the  first  Napoleon.  Sift  the  testi- 
mony to  the  miraculous  claims  of  various  religions 


56  A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON. 

by  all  means,  but  do  not  in  your  sifting  apply  a 
canon  which  would  rule  out  all  the  testimony  to  all 
history. 

But  there  is  yet  more  to  be  said  on  this  subject. 
The  position  of  Christianity  is  still  stronger.  For 
when  you  compare  the  heroes  or  central  figures  of 
these  other  religions  with  the  central  Figure  of  the 
Cluistian  religion,  you  notice  at  once  the  essential 
difference  in  their  characters.  Christ's  undisputed 
historic  character  is  the  miracle  of  mankind.  To 
men  who  know  what  ordinary  human  lives  are,  His 
birth  is  far  less  miraculous  than  His  life.  Compare, 
for  example,  the  personality  of  Bouddha  with  the 
personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  Bouddha  is  essentially 
human ;  Christ  is  more  than  human  :  Bouddha 
requires  no  miraculous  birth  to  account  for  him  ; 
Christ  does.  Like  Confucius,  like  Socrates,  like  Mo- 
hammed, Bouddha  is  a  sinner  and  acknowledges  it, 
and  tries  his  best  to  overcome  his  sin.  The  received 
story  of  him  begins  by  describing  the  vanities  and 
sensualities  of  his  youth,  from  which  his  whole  after- 
life is  an  effort  to  recover.  According  to  their  own 
records,  all  these  other  teachers  of  mankind  cannot* 
stand  the  test  of  perfect  holiness,  which  they  nuist 
stand  if  you  are  to  compare  them  to  Jesus  Christ. 
"  What  have  we  to  do  with  Thee,  Jesus,  Thou  Son 
of  God  ? "  was  the  cry  of  one  possessed  with  devils 
at  Capernaum  ;  and  it  has  been  the  instinctive  cry  of 
every  human  being  without  exception,   whensoever 


A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON.  67 

the  universal  sinfulness  of  men  has  been  confronted 
with  the  unique  purity  of  Jesus,  and  with  his  own 
unique  and  avowed  consciousness  of  that  purity. 
This  is  why  the  repeated  endeavors  of  the  sceptical 
human  reason  to  account  for  Jesus  Christ  on  merely 
natural  grounds  have  all  broken  down.  His  majes- 
tic personality  cannot  be  thus  accounted  for;  and 
each  successive  endeavor  to  do  so,  after  easily 
exploding  the  fallacies  of  previous  endeavors,  has 
itself  fared  no  better.  The  miraculous  element  in 
the  origin  of  Christ  is  required  by  tlie  attested  his- 
toric character  of  Christ ;  whereas  His  rivals  in  the 
other  religions  of  the  world  manifest  no  such  person- 
ality as  to  demand  a  miraculous  origin.  No,  what 
we  may  properly  and  certainly  conclude  from  these 
stories  of  a  wonderful  birth  that  have  gathered  about 
the  founders  of  other  religions  than  the  Christian  is 
this  :  that  they  are  signs  and  foretastes  of  the  pro- 
found conviction  of  the  universal  human  soul,  that  if 
ever  the  Almighty  and  the  All-Holy  should  intervene 
in  the  destiny  of  mankind,  this  intervention  would  be 
supernatural  from  the  start.  To  dismiss  the  super- 
natural in  Jesus  because  men  looked  for  it  before 
Jesus,  is  as  unscientific  as  it  is  irreligious.  On  the 
contrary,  their  position  is  vastly  more  rational  who, 
expecting  the  Christ,  have  anticipated  him  in  the 
Bouddha,  than  is  the  position  of  those  who,  disap- 
pointed in  the  Bouddha,  for  that  cause  reject  the 
Christ. 


58  A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON. 

The  study  of  this  earth  as  it  actually  is,  and  of  man 
as  history  reveals  him,  makes  manifest  in  all  creation 
an  ascending  series  of  being.^  At  the  bottom  is 
what  we  call  matter,  regulated  ajiparently  by  purely 
mechanical  laws.  Next  comes  the  vegetable  life, 
soon  passing  into  the  animal,  where  there  is  spon- 
taneous movement,  instinct,  —  a  confused  self-con- 
sciousness that  lifts  itself  by  little  and  little  into 
intelligence  and  morality.  Without  entering  now 
into  the  present  explanation  of  men  of  science,  who 
account  for  all  this  by  their  theory  of  evolution,  it  is 
sufficient  to  notice  at  each  stage  of  this  progress  the 
manifestation  of  a  life  which,  in  relation  to  the  pre- 
ceding, is  s»^;^r-natural,  because  it  is  attested  by 
phenomena  which  the  previous  phase  of  being  did 
not  produce.  The  lowest  form  of  animal  life  works 
miracles  to  the  vegetable,  and  man"  works  miracles 
with  both.  Man  by  his  will  suspends  the  law  of 
gravitation,  arresting  the  stone  as  it  falls ;  by  his 
reason  he  so  manipulates  the  forces  and  faculties  be- 
neath him  as  to  convert  the  lightning  into  the  tele- 
graph ;  as  to  graft  into  a  tree  the  branch  that  it 
never  would  have  borne  ;  as  to  create  among  ani- 
mals and  flowers  new  types  by  the  crossing  of 
species.  Thus  the  reign  of  man  is  recognizable  every- 
where by  signs  that  would  be  supernatural  to  an 
observer  who  was  only  acquainted  with  the  lower 
phenomena  of  mechanics  and  of  vegetable  and  ani- 

^   See  MacoU's  "  Christianity  in  relation  to  Science  and  Morals." 


A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON.  59 

mal  existence.  If,  then,  we  admit  that  above  the 
reign  of  man  there  is  the  reign  of  God,  —  the  infinite, 
immanent  Energy  of  the  world,  —  it  is  not  merely 
likely,  it  is  inevitable,  that  when  that  Divine  Author- 
ity shows  itself  to  man,  and  in  man,  this  will  be  by 
signs  that  unto  man  are  supernatural.  This  is  the 
irresistible  analogy  of  the  evolution  of  the  world. 
As  we  bow  with  the  adoring  angels  at  the  cradle  in 
Bethlehem ;  as  we  confess  our  faith  in  the  Gospel 
history  of  our  Saviour's  miraculous  birth  of  the 
Blessed  Virgin  INIary,  we  are  pushed  to  our  convic- 
tion by  the  whole  momentum  of  the  constitution  and 
being  of  the  world.  It  is  our  rational  apprehension 
of  what  this  universe  of  being  is  —  of  what  nature 
is  to  us,  and  what  we  are  to  nature  —  that  impels  us 
to  expect  at  the  Incarnation  of  the  God-Man  the 
signs  of  God's  Power  and  Love. 

My  brethren,  I  have  been  speaking  to-day  of  some 
theoretical  difficulties  of  our  faith  in  the  great 
Christian  verity  of  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of 
God.  I  have  done  so  with  deep  reluctance,  but  I 
had  to  do  so.  No  earnest  preacher  of  the  Gospel 
can  fail  to  feel  the  obligation  that  lies  on  him  in  this 
regard  by  reason  of  the  thinking  of  this  age.  When 
books  and  brochures  and  even  newspapers  are  scat- 
tering broadcast  in  our  homes  the  crude  speculations 
and  rash  statements  of  men  who  are  not  even  serious 
sceptics,  but  rather  the  retailers  of  other  people's 
scepticism,  —  penny-a-liners  who  wish  to  turn  to  their 


60  A   CHRISTMAS   SERMON. 

own  profit  the  sensations  of  the  hour,  —  something 
is  certainly  due  to  tliose  more  earnest  Christians 
whose  faith  is  thereby  troubled.  It  is  not  so  much 
that  their  faith  is  destroyed,  as  that  they  suddenly 
awake  to  the  fact  that  they  are  not  sufficiently  in- 
formed as  to  the  reasons  for  their  faith.  With  no 
suitable  books  at  hand,  with  no  competent  advisers 
whom  they  can  consult,  —  in  some  cases  also  without 
those  habits  of  strict  intellectual  discipline  which 
would  tit  them  to  cope  with  these  difficulties  sug- 
gested to  them  from  without,  —  many  such  earnest 
Christians  find  these  crude  scej^tical  suggestions 
sticking  unanswered  in  their  minds.  And  they  are 
troubled  by  them,  —  troubled  but  silent.  Their 
Christian  faith  is  so  true  that  they  are  most  reluctant 
to  give  tongue  to  the  difficulties  of  it.  So  they  go 
their  ways,  feeling  the  subtle  chill  that  rests  upon 
their  spirits.  If  the  minister  of  the  Gospel  does  not 
help  them,  no  man  will ;  and  he  often  is  peculiarly 
able  to  help  them,  because  his  address  is  impersonal 
to  them,  —  because,  amidst  the  upturned  faces  of  his 
audience,  he  does  not  even  know  precisely  which  the 
troubled  ones  are.  It  is  in  this  view,  with  this  aim, 
in  this  spirit,  that  I  have  tried  to  address  you  to-day. 
May  the  blessing  of  the  Holy  Ghost  follow  my  brief 
words. 

But  I  cannot  close  without  one  word  of  a  differ- 
ent kind.  This  truth  of  the  incarnation  of  our  Lord 
and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ  is  too  wide,  too  intimate, 


A  CHRISTMAS   SERMON.  61 

too  practical,  to  be  handled  simply  so.  Let  us  never 
forget  that  it  is  revealed  not  only  for  our  learning,  but 
for  our  living.  It  is  a  matter  of  our  life  and  death, 
—  a  matter  to  be  dealt  with  not  only  in  our  studies, 
but  on  our  knees.  The  Incarnation  is  the  very  sub- 
stance of  the  Christian's  prayers.  "  Through  Christ 
we  all  have  access  by  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father." 
"Being  justified  by  faith,  we  have  peace  with  God 
through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  Are  not  all  our 
prayers  finished  in  His  Name  ?  To  be  sure  that  this 
same  human  nature  of  ours  is  actually  in  toucli  with 
God,  —  has  been  taken  by  the  Son  of  God  into  per- 
sonal union  with  His  Holy  and  Eternal  Being,  —  is  not 
that  feeling,  that  certainty  more  tlian  enough  to  fill 
our  souls  with  hopes  and  fears,  with  aspirations  and 
endeavors,  with  searchings  of  heart  and  impulses  of 
will  that  must  needs  bring  us  to  our  knees  ?  It  is  to 
this  aspect  of  our  religious  life  that  we  must  address 
ourselves  during  the  remainder  of  this  Christmas 
season,  and  especially  as  we  turn  this  morning  to  our 
service  of  Holy  Communiou  at  the  altar  of  our 
God  and  Saviour. 


VI. 

THE   CHKIST  AS   WONDERFUL. 

Unto  us  a  child  is  born  .  .  .  and  His  Xame  shall  be  called 
Wonderful.  —  Isaiah,  ix.  6. 

TN  the  Hebrew  the  name  of  a  person  was  intended 
-*■  to  be  indicative  of  his  personality,  and  in  many 
of  the  books  of  Holy  Scripture  we  notice  the  en- 
deavor to  attach  men's  names  to  their  nature.  In- 
deed there  is  no  denying,  however  we  may  try  to 
account  for  it,  that  we  have  in  the  Hebrew  history  a 
series  of  names  which  really  express  the  characters 
of  those  that  bore  them.  Nomen  est  omen.  The 
name  is  historically  a  sign. 

It  is  according  to  this  usage  that  our  text  from 
tlie  Old  Testament  lesson  of  this  Christmas  morning 
nmst  be  understood.  When  Isaiah  in  this  prophesy 
of  the  Messiah  attached  to  Him  the  name  "  Wonder- 
ful," he  meant  hereby  to  indicate  what  should  be  an 
essential  note  of  the  character  of  the  Christ  that  was 
to  be  born.  Christ's  personal  Being  is  foretold  to  be 
such  as  shall  of  itself  elicit  the  wonder,  the  awe  of 
mankind.  He  is  to  be  not  merely  great,  noble,  help- 
ful, powerful ;  His  influence  in  the  world  is  to  be  due 


THE   CHRIST   AS    WONDERFUL.  63 

to  a  peculiar  quality  in  Him  which  compels  the 
attention  of  human  souls  for  the  reason  that  He  as- 
tonishes them.  Jesus  Christ,  apart  from  His  circum- 
stances and  the  peculiar  conditions  of  His  time,  is  to 
be  in  Himself  for  all  time  unique  and  marvellous. 

It  is  of  this  fact  in  its  bearing  on  the  evidences 
of  Christianity  that  I  desire  to  speak  t^-day.  My 
brethren,  the  evidences  of  Christianity  are  as  manifold 
as  human  nature  is ;  for  evidence  is  always  relative. 
Proof  is  not  cogent  in  the  air;  it  is  cogent  when  it 
strikes  an  individual  mind,  meeting  that  mind's  dif- 
ficulties, appealing  to  that  mind's  sympathies,  ex- 
pressing the  circumstances,  the  conditions,  the 
atmosphere  in  which  that  mind  has  thriven.  And 
since  men's  minds  are  as  various  as  their  characters 
and  conditions,  some  arguments  which  are  a  proof  to 
one  man  arc  not  proof  to  another  man,  because  of 
the  difference  in  the  men.  The  man  that  is  blind 
and  the  man  that  sees,  the  man  that  is  familiar  with 
the  methods  of  natural  science  and  the  man  that 
knows  nothing  of  them,  the  lawyer  and  the  poet,  the 
young  man  and  the  old,  must  be  met  by  different 
arguments  if  the  pressure,  the  cogency  of  the  argu- 
ments is  to  be  equally  felt  by  all.  Truth  is  absolute, 
but  the  arguments  for  truth  are  relative  to  the  truth- 
seeker.  On  this  account  the  aspect  of  Christian  con- 
troversy has  varied  from  age  to  age.  Superficial 
students  sometimes  fancy  that  this  change  of  face  in 
the  controversy  about  Christianity  implies  that  Chris- 


64  THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL. 

tianity  itself  is  shifting  and  uncertain ;  whereas  that 
which  actually  alters  is  not  the  revelation  of  Jesus 
Christ  but  the  point  of  view  of  the  human  minds 
that  controvert  that  revelation. 

Nevertheless  there  are  elements  in  the  evidence 
for  Christianity  which  are  independent  of  the  varying 
characteristics  and  conditions  of  mankind;  and  for 
this  reason,  that  they  appeal  to  what  is  universal  and 
stable  in  mankind.  Man  is  not  various  in  every- 
thing,—  in  some  things  he  is  always  the  same;  and 
there  are  some  aspects  of  Christianity  which  strike 
squarely  at  that  which  is  permanent  in  man.  When 
God  sent  dov/n  to  men  their  Saviour,  God  knew  what 
was  in  the  men  that  He  desired  to  save  ;  and  foras- 
much as  man  had  been  once  for  all  created  in  God's 
image,  the  Creator  knew  that  tiiere  would  always  be 
in  man  one  instinct  at  least  that  would  open  invaria- 
bly to  the  eternal  truth  ;  and  that  is  the  instinct  of 
admiration  for  holiness.  And  when  Isaiah,  foretell- 
ing Christ's  advent,  named  Him  the  "  Wonderful," 
Isaiah  was  indicating  this  quality  in  our  Saviour  : 
that  by  the  sheer  power  of  His  absolute  holiness,  by 
the  simple  presentation  of  Himself,  our  Saviour 
should  elicit  the  instinctive  awe  of  human  souls  in 
every   age. 

And  it  is  with  her  usual  genius  for  selection  that 
the  Church  has  chosen  this  passage  of  Isaiah  for  the 
Epistle  of  to-day ;  for  it  is  this  wonderfulness  of 
Jesus  that  the  Christian  consciousness  has   specially 


THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL,  65 

apprehended  in  His  miraculous  birth  at  Bethlehem. 
The  birth  is  really  no  more  wonderful  than  the  rest 
of  the  life  of  Jesus  ;  but  to  the  average  human  im- 
agination the  Birth  appears  to  be  more  wonderful 
than  the  life.  Yet  to  the  mature  Christian  conscious- 
ness, aware  of  what  this  life  of  ours  is  actually  from 
birth  to  death,  it  is  the  character  of  the  Christ,  the 
Holiness  of  the  Man  Christ,  that  makes  Him  most 
marvellous  ;  and  in  our  time  perhaps  more  than  in 
any  previous  age  there  is  a  helpful  lesson  here,  —  a 
lesson  that  clears  up  certain  difficulties  of  our  modern 
speculations  as  to  the  faith  of  Christendom  in  Christ. 
Ours  is  an  age  of  laborious  investigation  as  to  the 
historic  origins  of  Christianity  ;  it  is  an  age,  too,  of 
much  painful  scrutiny  as  to  the  credentials  and  the 
mutual  relations  of  Science  and  Revelation.  We  are 
determined  to  be  both  devout  and  rational ;  and  this 
requires  a  suspension  of  judgment,  a  humility  of 
spirit,  and  a  thoroughness  of  will  which  are  very 
trying.  Sometimes  the  best  of  us  grow  befogged 
and  tired  and  discouraged  while  we  wait  for  the  solu- 
tion of  these  riddles  ;  for  our  "  vision,"  like  Daniel's, 
"  is  yet  for  many  days."  Now  it  is  one  thing  to  be  in 
suspense,  towards  some  or  all  the  human  explana- 
tions as  to  how  Christ  came  to  be  what  He  is,  and 
to  say  what  He  has  said,  and  to  do  what  He  has 
done  ;  it  is  quite  another  thing  for  the  Christian  soul 
to  be  in  suspense  toward  Christ  Himself.  There  is 
awful  risk  in  that :  there  will  be  forfeits  to   pay  in 

5 


66  THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDEEFUL. 

the  Resurrection  morning.  For  time  is  passing,  and 
our  earthly  existence  is  waning  to  its  close  ;  and  for 
liuman  souls  to  be  living  here  without  Christ's  com- 
panionship, when  that  companionship  is  offered  them, 
is  to  impoverish  life  of  an  inestimable  privilege.  To 
postpone  the  hour  when  we  shall  open  our  hearts 
and  wills  to  Jesus  until  the  hour  when  our  conflict- 
ing historic  and  scientitic  questions  about  Jesus  have 
been  completely  settled,  will  be  an  indefinite  post- 
ponement ;  for  in  this  world  that  hour  of  settlement 
will  never  come.  The  arcana  of  history,  the  secrets 
of  science  can  never  be  probed  to  the  bottom,  nor 
can  the  eager  queries  of  the  restless  human  intellect 
be  ever  entirely  estopped.  On  earth,  at  any  rate, 
we  know  but  in  part,  and  see  through  a  glass  darkly. 
Meanwhile  we  nmst  work  while  it  is  called  to-day ; 
and  to  have  worked  without  Christ  on  earth  when 
He  was  ready  to  work  with  us  —  to  sustain  us  by 
His  power,  to  draw  us  by  His  love  —  will  be  to  have 
lost  the  best  part  of  life.  And  in  the  faces  of  many 
earnest  men  and  women  in  our  midst,  born  of  Chris- 
tian parents  and  themselves  bearing  the  Christian 
name,  you  can  see  the  embarrassment,  the  perplexity, 
the  pathos  which  must  have  been  in  Philip's  face  at 
that  moment  of  the  Gospel  story  when  the  Lord 
turned  to  him  and  said :  "  Have  I  been  so  long  time 
with  you,  and  yet  hast  thou  not  known  jNIe,  Philip  ?  " 
And  it  is  in  moments  such  as  that,  ray  brothers,  that 
the  argument  before  us  is  most  prevailing.     For  if 


THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL.  67 

there  be  anything  whatsoever  that  you  can  rely  on  in 
the  nature  of  man  as  man,  —  anything  of  firm  validity 
in  man's  reason  or  his  heart ;  anything  which  man 
carries  with  liim  always,  in  periods  of  ignorance  and 
in  periods  of  knowledge,  in  childhood  and  in  old  age, 
M  hen  the  mind  and  will  are  clear  and  strong,  and 
when  they  are  weak  and  blinded,  —  it  is  this :  the 
faculty  whereby  man  recognizes  directly  that  holiness 
is  holy,  aud  that  perfect  holiness  is  God. 

My  brethren,  there  are  in  man  various  faculties  of 
direct  apprehension.  We  have  faculties  whereby  we 
apprehend  the  things  of  sense  and  time.  We  have 
also  higher  faculties  whereby  we  appreiiend  the  ab- 
stract truths  of  logic  and  mathematics.  And  we 
have  still  other  faculties,  through  which  music,  paint- 
ing, poetry  appeal  to  us.  These  faculties  are  certain  : 
if  man  is,  they  are.  Subtile,  delicate,  energetic, 
absolute,  these  various  faculties  of  man  are  each  su- 
preme in  their  own  sphere  ;  and  they  are  impatient 
of  the  criteria  and  the  methods  that  avail  in  different 
spheres.  The  mathematician  may  be  color-blind ; 
the  artist  may  know  little  of  logic  ;  the  chemist  may 
have  a  poor  ear  for  music  ;  but  in  each  of  their  re- 
spective realms  the  musician,  the  logician,  the  chem- 
ist is  absolute.  He  knows.  And  there  is  also  in 
mankind  another  —  man's  highest  —  faculty  (call  it 
what  you  will,  conscience,  soul,  spirit)  whereby  we 
perceive  holiness,  whereby  we  recognize  God.  Akin 
to  that  mysterious  power  through  which  we  discern 


68  THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL. 

persons  from  things,  and  through  which  we  love  some 
persons  and  dislike  others,  this  faculty  enables  us, 
when  we  awake  to  God's  likeness,  to  be  satisfied 
with  it.  And  this  spiritual  faculty  is  the  most  uni- 
versal, the  most  spontaneous  of  all  in  man.  It  may 
lie  dormant ;  it  may  for  a  while  be  misdirected  ;  it 
may  be  warped  by  wrong  education,  or  clouded  by 
wilful  sin.  But  the  history  of  all  Imman  civilization 
bears  testimony  to  this  :  that  God  has  never  left 
Himself  without  a  witness  in  any  nation  under 
heaven.  To  this  innate  spiritual  faculty  of  ours  the 
Christ  appeals.  He  shows  Himself  as  absolutely 
holy  ;  and  He  knows  that  we  know  that  "  there  is 
none  holy  but  One,  that  is  God."  Hence  independ- 
ently of  all  questions  of  anatomy  and  of  origin,  — 
whether  we  can  explain  what  produced  Him,  or  how 
the  story  of  Him  was  told  originally  and  preserved 
until  to-day,  —  when  we  confront  the  Person  and 
character  of  Jesus  Christ  as  revealed  in  the  New 
Testament  and  proclaimed  by  the  Christian  Church, 
that  character  speaks  for  itself,  as  it  has  always 
spoken.  That  is  what  we  mean  by  holy,  that  is 
what  we  mean  by  God.  The  Babe  at  Bethlehem  is 
Wonderful.     We  are  in  awe  of  Him. 

And  to-day  I  desire  to  join  with  you  in  looking  for 
a  few  moments  steadily  at  that  vision.  When  Leon- 
ardo da  Vinci  was  painting  a  picture  of  the  Nativity, 
he  made  it  in  the  first  instance  full  of  detail  and 
crowded  with  subordinate  personages.     But  when. 


THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL.  69 

on  showing  the  picture,  he  found  that  people  were 
admiring  the  microscopic  details  for  their  own  sake 
and  staying  too  long  at  the  subordinate  figures,  he 
daubed  these  all  out,  so  that  attention  might  be  riv- 
eted on  the  Divine  Face  alone.  Let  us  make  this 
morning  a  similar  endeavor.  Apart  from  our  un- 
ending debates  about  Christ,  let  us  try  to  have  some 
vision  of  the  absolute  Holiness  of  Jesus  Christ  Him- 
self, and  to  realize  its  separate  and  sufficient  power 
as  evidence  for  the  truth  that  is  to  save  our  souls. 
There  are  times  and  places  when  no  man  can  speak 
out.  *  There  are  some  men  and  some  women  who 
never  speak  out,  —  who  carry  their  religious  difficulties 
shut  tight  within  their  souls,  and  suffer,  and  make  no 
sign.  Two  friends  may  be  passing  through  the  same 
trial ;  on  every  other  topic  they  talk  freely,  but  on 
this  they  hold  their  peace.  They  cannot  give  their 
whole  confidence  to  each  other,  and  the  half  they  will 
not  give.  But  there  is  one  person  who  ought  to 
understand  them  almost  beforehand  ;  one  place  where 
the  very  atmosphere  is  soothing  and  clarifying.  The 
preacher  of  the  Gospel  in  the  house  of  God,. for  the 
reason  that  his  particular  message  to  such  troubled 
souls  is  veiled  and  softened  and  shorn  of  many  per- 
sonal disabilities  by  the  fact  that  it  is  part  and  parcel 
of  his  general  message  to  all  souls  within  his  range  — 
the  preacher  of  the  Gospel  can  sometimes  utter  to 
these  persons  a  winged  word  that  will  reach  them  and 
help  them.     God  grant  it  may  be  so  this  morning. 


70  THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL. 

Christianity,  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  organ- 
ization of  the  Christian  Church  are  facts  in  the 
world.  The  inhabitants  of  this  city  and  country,  irre- 
spective of  personal  choice,  are  witnesses  to  their 
existence  and  their  power.  You  yourselves  are  all 
of  you  called  Christians  because  your  fathers  were, 
and  few  would  repudiate  the  title.  This  organiza- 
tion, this  religion  did  not  spring  out  of  nothing. 
They  are  actual,  they  represent  facts.  This  religion 
had  a  Founder,  and  His  Name,  His  country.  His 
date.  His  career,  arc  topics  of  universal  discussion. 
The  very  enemies  of  Christianity  have,  in  one  view, 
done  most  to  bring  out  the  actuality  of  Christ  as  a 
Personage  of  history  that  nuist  be  reckoned  with. 
His  biographies  exist,  and  the  manuscript  copies  of 
these  biographies  of  Christ  are  more  immerous  and 
independent  and  manifold,  and  go  closer  to  the  time 
when  Christ  Himself  lived,  than  do  the  extant  manu- 
scripts of  the  lives  of  any  other  classic  personage. 
As  historic  evidence  goes,  we  have  to-day  more  evi- 
dence for  the  data  of  the  life  of  Christ  than  for  those 
of  the.  lives  of  any  one  even  of  the  emperors  of 
Rome.  Unless  we  are  to  admit  a  measure  of  in- 
credulity —  one  had  better  say  of  credulity,  for  often- 
times nothing  is  more  credulous  than  incredulity  — 
unless  we  are  to  admit  a  measure  of  incredulity  as  to 
the  Gospel  history  which  no  one  would  admit  for  a  mo- 
ment in  matters  of  secular  history,  then  we  can  leave 
it  not  merely  to  the  scholars,  but  to  the  general  con- 


THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL.  71 

8ciousiiess  of  civilized  men,  whether  or  no  we  do  not 
and  must  not  gather  from  the  New  Testament  a  clear, 
a  consistent,  and  an  authentic  impression  of  the  his- 
toric personality  of  Jesus.     Men  used  to  believe  this 
on  the  authority  of  the  Church  alone.     Now  we  can 
believe  it  also  on  the  strength  of  a  close,  scholarly, 
and  critical  evidence  so  wide  and  full  that  it  has  no 
parallel  in  the  case  of  any  other  ancient  documents 
that  have  been  transmitted  to  us  in  the  whole  range 
of  literature.    If  the  story  of  Christ  were  not  mirac- 
ulous it  would  be  universally  admitted.     There  are 
certain  superficial  discrepancies  in  the  books  of  the 
New  Testament  that   tell  the   story  of  Jesus,  but 
these  discrepancies  only  make  assurance  doubly  sure. 
They  are  what  every  judge  and  jury  in  our  courts  to- 
day are  perfectly  familiar  with  in  cases  that  are  under 
our  own  eyes;  they  are  inevitable  where  the  wit- 
nesses are  both  independent  and  honest,  for  no  four 
men  ever  see  or  hear  the  whole  of  anything,  or  re- 
member precisely  what  they  saw  and  heard.     And 
when  you    have  threshed  out  thoroughly  these  ap- 
parent  discrepancies  of  the   New    Testament,    and 
compared  the  evidences  together,  —  when  you  have 
realized  in  your  mind  so  much  of  the  story  as  is  his- 
torically irrefragable, —  there  rises  before  you  a  unique 
and  consistent  character  that  speaks  for  itself.     By 
one  process  and  one  only  can  you  evacuate  this  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  of  its  significance  :  by  begging  the 
whole  question  and  denying  beforehand  the  general 


72  THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL. 

possibility  of  the  supernatural  and  miraculous.  Yet 
even  this  presupposition  does  not  relieve  you  of  your 
dilemma :  for  if  you  refuse  to  explain  Christ's  Being 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  miraculous,  there  stands 
before  you  still  the  actual  Christ  of  history ;  and  if 
you  will  not  account  for  Him  divinely  you  nnist  ac- 
count for  Him  humanly ;  and  tliis  is  precisely  what 
nineteen  centuries  of  persistent  sceptical  criticism 
have  never  once  succeeded  in  accomplishing.  Not 
only  have  the  sceptics  failed  to  account  for  Christ  in 
a  manner  satisfactory  to  Christians,  but  they  have 
failed  to  account  for  Him  so  as  to  satisfy  themselves. 
To  follow  the  course  of  the  anti-miraculous  criticism 
of  the  New  Testament  is  to  see  one  long  series  of 
theories  each  of  which  in  turn  has  upset  the  other. 
The  critics  admit  this  themselves.  They  each  start 
out  by  assuming  that  the  Christian  explanation  of 
Christ  as  God  is  incredible  ;  but  they  always  end  by 
showing  that  any  human  explanation  of  Christ  is  in- 
credible. There  are  incontestable  features  of  the  his- 
toric narrative  which  refuse  to  be  either  explained  or 
explained  away  by  any  theory  that  denies  the  super- 
natural. The  historic  Christ  is  as  compact  as  He  is 
unique. 

Now  here  arises  the  special  point  before  us.  INIany 
persons,  in  saying  that  they  deny  the  possibility  of  the 
supernatural  and  the  miraculous,  mean  really  that 
they  are  unable  to  account  for  tlie  miraculous,  —  un- 
able to  explain  how  the  miraculous  is  miraculous. 


THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL.  73 

But  that  is  not  the  point.  No  Christian  undertakes 
to  do  that.  The  real  point  is  this.  All  the  much 
vaunted  advances  of  human  civilization,  all  the  dis- 
coveries and  the  progress  of  the  human  intellect  and 
will,  have  been  made  from  this  starting-point  and  on 
this  basis  :  that,  speaking  broadly,  the  human  mind 
ife  trustworthy  ;  that  its  judgments  are  valid  for  itself. 
For  obviously  if  you  and  I  cannot  trust  the  judg- 
ments of  our  own  minds  there  is  nothing  that  we 
can  trust,  for  we  cannot  get  behind  our  own  mind. 
We  must  see  with  our  own  eyes,  if  we  see  at  all ; 
and  to  claim  that  we  are  all  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind  is  to  throw  up  the  cards.  In  that  case  our 
boasted  civilization  is  a  delusion  and  a  sham  ;  which 
no  sane  mind  will  or  can  admit,  for  it  would  be  equiv- 
alent to  intellectual  suicide.  So  then,  unless  the 
human  intellect  has  gone  backward  instead  of  for- 
ward; unless  our  direct  intellectual  judgments  are 
no  longer  to  be  depended  on,  and  the  foundations  of 
our  whole  rational  life  are  crumbling,  —  then  it  must 
be  admitted  that  when  the  human  mind  confronts 
honestly  the  historic  character  of  Jesus  Christ  it  can 
recognize  Him  for  what  He  is.  It  may  not  be  able 
to  explain  Him,  but  it  can  know  Him.  The  mirac- 
ulous is  miraculous,  and  that  is  the  end  of  it ;  and  if 
Christ  is  miraculous,  He  can  be  recognized  as  such. 
When  Isaiah  called  Christ  "  the  Wonderful,"  he  was 
alluding  to  this  fact :  that  the  miraculous  speaks  for 
itself,  —  that,  if  it  appears  to  man,  it  is  knowable  by 


74  THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL. 

man.  Now  I  claim  that  the  spectacle  of  Christianity 
ill  the  world,  to-day  as  always,  is  precisely  that,  and 
the  very  attitude  of  its  hostile  critics  attests  it.  The 
Christ  of  the  Gospels  defies  criticism  to  do  anything 
else  than  wonder  at  Him.  It  is  just  as  Isaiah  said  it 
would  be  :  so  much  so,  that  in  this  "age  of  reason," 
this  "  era  of  scientific  research,"  when  philosophers 
insist  that  they  will  not  touch  anything  that  is  not 
"  positive,'  there  is  scarcely  an  author  or  thinker  of 
note  in  all  our  most  modern  literature  who  is  able  to 
keep  Jesus  Christ  out  of  his  pages.  Christ  is  so  posi- 
tive, so  actual,  so  persistent,  that  He  draws  all  men 
unto  Him.  People  who  think  thoroughly  must  think 
about  Him.  ]Men  cannot  either  explain  Him  or  ex- 
])lain  Him  away.    They  simply  stand  in  awe  of  Him. 

And  why?  Because  of  His  absolute  holiness. 
There  have  been  plenty  of  miracles  in  history  that 
made  no  lasting  impression  on  the  civilized  world. 
The  world  could  not  explain  them  but  it  passed 
them  by.  They  did  not  permanently  appeal  to  the 
world,  nor  exact  its  obeisance.  This  is  what  Christ 
and  His  apostles  seem  to  have  meant  by  the  false 
signs  and  false  prophets  Avhich  should  arise  in  the 
world,  deceiving,  if  it  were  possible,  the  very  elect. 
But  it  was  not  possible.  These  signs  were  miracu- 
lous, but  there  was  no  absolute  holiness  in  them  ; 
and  it  is  holiness  that  the  elect  are  looking  for.  On 
the  other  hand,  that  which  makes  the  wonderfulness 
of  Christ  unique  is  that  He  is  both  wonderful  and 


THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL.  75 

holy.  It  is  possible  that  many  of  the  miracles  of 
history  were  not,  in  the  absolute  sense,  superhuman 
at  all.  They  may  have  been  only  miracles  to  the 
then  stage  of  man's  intellectual  ignorance  of  tiie 
natural  forces  of  this  world.  Whether  actually  so  or 
not,  it  is  conceivable  that  our  Lord's  own  miracles  of 
healing  were  due  to  a  combination  of  natural  laws 
that  we  know  with  others  that  we  do  not  know,  or  to 
the  overruling  of  a  lower  by  a  higher  law  ;  but  it  is  in- 
conceivable that  the  historic  character  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  natural  to  man.  Say  what  you  will,  there 
is  in  man  an  instinct  of  holiness,  an  inveterate  con- 
viction that  somehow,  somewhere  holiness  exists, 
that  God  is  holy.  And  coupled  with  this  there  is 
also  in  man  the  profound  conviction  that  perfect 
holiness  is  not  human,  not  possible  for  man  as  he  is. 
Hence  if  perfect  holiness  appears  historically  to  man, 
it  is  bound  to  be  forever  a  miracle  to  him.  He  must 
wonder  at  it  as  sui)erhuman.  When  Jesus  stood  be- 
fore the  Jews  and  asked  them  quietly,  "  Which  of 
you  convinceth  INIe  of  sin  ?  "  He  was  manifesting 
Himself  as  the  miracle  of  history.  As  He  Himself 
said  elsewhere,  "  There  is  none  holy  but  One,  that  is 
God."  There  is  no  arguing  about  holiness.  We 
know  it  when  we  see  it,  and  we  know  that  perfect 
holiness  is  God. 

Bear  with  me,  my  brothers,  while  I  look  at  this 
point  with  you  more  closely  still ;  for  believe  me,  we 
are  now  at  the  very  shrine  and  bulwark  of  our  faith, 


76  THE  CHRIST  AS  WONDERFUL. 

and  the  man  who  would  walk  unharmed  through  the 
perplexities  of  our  modern  speculation  must  see  this 
and  grasp  it  exactly  as  it  is.  It  is  Christ's  last 
word  to  men.  Other  religions  of  the  world,  and 
some  of  them  older  than  Christianity  and  possessing 
more  disciples,  have  enounced  great  doctrines,  have 
emphasized  great  duties,  have  urged  men  to  some 
law  of  holiness,  —  to  a  grand  ideal ;  but  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ  is  alone  in  this :  that  its  Founder 
embodies  the  ideal.  The  Doctrine  is  the  Doctor ; 
Christ  is  himself  the  All-Holy.  It  is  admitted  on  all 
hands  that  there  is  no  influence  comparable  to  per- 
sonality. It  is  the  one  substantial  force  of  human 
affairs.  It  is  not  measures  but  men  that  move  the 
world.  Now  in  the  case  of  the  founders  of  every 
other  religion,  the  personality  of  the  founder  has 
been  inadequate  to  the  religion  that  he  founded. 
They  set  ideals  before  men,  but  were  not  themselves 
ideal.  "  Brethren,  I  count  not  myself  to  have  at- 
tained, neither  to  be  already  perfect ;  but  I  press 
toward  the  mark,"  is  not  only  what  they  all  say  of 
themselves,  but  what  we  feel  about  them.  Even 
Sakyia  Mouni,  the  Bouddha,  perhaps  the  noblest  of 
them  all,  presents  in  his  life  a  struggle  with  evil  de- 
sire,—  a  struggle  upward  towards  better  things. 
He  began  with  the  consciousness  of  his  own  sinful- 
ness, and  tried  to  climb  out  of  it,  to  overcome  his 
sin.  But  Christ  did  no  climbing.  He  was  always 
at  the  summit.     He  was  indeed  a  conqueror  of  the 


THE   CHRIST  AS   WONDERFUL.  77 

sin  He  found  in  the  world,  but  in  Himself  He  found 
no  sin  to  conquer.  His  life  is  not  an  evolution  from 
imperfection  to  perfection,  but  a  revelation,  an  ex- 
hibition of  the  Perfect  Life.  Here  is  the  clue  to  the 
singular  influence  of  the  New  Testament  of  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  not  a  book  about  holiness,  but  about 
the  Holy  One. 

But  may  not  this  Perfect  Man  be  only  man  after 
all  ?  Must  He  be  the  God-Man  ?  Must  perfect  holi- 
ness be  very  God  ?  My  brethren,  I  leave  that  ques- 
tion to  your  own  minds  and  consciences,  —  to  that 
absolute  spiritual  faculty  in  you  of  which  I  spoke 
before.  But  as  if  to  render  that  question  impos- 
sible from  the  start,  there  is  an  item  in  the  charac- 
ter of  Jesus  Christ  which  I  have  not  yet  mentioned 
and  which  shows  conclusively  that  He  is  not 
mere  man.  I  mean  Christ's  own  consciousness 
that  He  is  the  Holy  One,  —  His  bold  and  plain 
assertion  of  His  absolute  perfection.  "Never  man 
spake  like  this  Man."  This  is  what  has  stag- 
gered the  critics ;  this  unexampled,  this  inimitable, 
this  otherwise  inconceivable  self-assertion  of  the 
Christ.  "  I  am  the  Truth.  He  that  hath  seen  Me 
hath  seen  the  Father.  Which  of  you  convinceth  Me 
of  sin  ?  I  have  power  to  forgive  sins."  There  have 
been  many  myths  in  many  religions  gathering  about 
the  personage  of  their  founders ;  but  when  scru- 
tinized and  compared,  the  myths  of  all  religions 
have  been  found,  in  the  first  place,  to  be  all  similar 


78  THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL. 

at  the  root  ;  and,  secondly,  to  be  projections  of  the 
mind  and  character  and  history  of  the  myth-makers, 
of  the  peoples  from  which  they  sprang.  Invention 
has  always  built  on  precedent.  But  for  this  self- 
assertion  of  absolute  personal  holiness  there  is  no 
precedent  under  heaven.  There  is  no  slightest  pre- 
monition of  it  anywhere  before  ;  no  shadow  of  it, 
no  approach  to  it,  since.  In  particular  it  is  utterly 
contrary  both  to  the  character  of  the  early  Christians, 
whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  and  to  the  special  conditions 
of  the  age  when  Christianity  appeared.  It  may  be 
just  conceivable  that  God  might  have  made  a  perfect 
man  who  was  also  a  mere  man.  But  that  any  mere 
man  should  be  at  once  perfect  and  assertively  con- 
scious of  it,  is  contrary  to  our  very  conception  of  a 
perfect  man.  When  God  in  the  Bible  announces 
His  holiness,  we  feel  that  it  is  becoming  in  Him  to 
do  so,  because  He  is  God  and  we  are  His  creatures  ; 
but  the  moment  that  any  creature  of  God  lays  claim 
to  absolute  goodness,  we  feel  instinctively,  to  repeat 
Christ's  words  once  more,  that  "  there  is  none  good 
but  One,  that  is  God." 

And  take  notice,  finally,  that  this  impression  of 
Christ's  combined  holiness  and  self-assertion  of  holi- 
ness is  not  made  on  us  by  the  Gospel  biographies  of 
Him  only.  The  undisputed  Epistles  of  the  New 
Testament,  which  are  admitted  on  all  hands  to  be  in- 
dependent in  their  witness  to  Christ  and  to  have 
antedated  the  four  Gospels,  are  full  of  the  same  im- 


THE   CHRIST   AS   WONDERFUL.  79 

pression.  It  is  clear  that  Christ  made  on  the  authors 
of  these  letters,  who  knew  Him  face  to  face,  the 
identical  impression  tliat  the  Gospel  story  of  Him 
makes  on  us  to-day.  And  the  marvel  of  it  is  that 
neither  they  nor  we  have  been  shocked  in  our  sense 
of  His  holiness  by  His  own  assertion  of  it.  He,  then, 
be  it  said  in  all  reverence,  is  the  solitary  instance 
in  the  whole  range  of  human  literature  and  character 
in  whicli  men  have  for  one  moment  put  up  with 
such  extraordinary  claims  while  admitting  the  justice 
of  them.  AVe  cannot  deny  the  holiness  ;  we  are  not 
shocked  by  liis  own  assertion  of  it.  And  if  this  be  not 
a  proof  of  ( 'hrist's  unique  reality,  then  there  is  nothing 
in  mans  chxim  to  any  knowledge  of  himself  or  of  this 
world.  In  tliis  case  certainly  the  miraculous  attests 
itself.  It  could  not  have  been  conceived  as  happen- 
ing unless  it  had  happened. 

And  to-day  we  are  celebrating  Christ's  Birth.  It 
was  on  Christmas  that  the  Most  High  visited  us  as  a 
little  Child,  Oriens  ex  alto,  as  the  old  anthem  tells. 
Come,  let  us  adore  Him.     Come,  bow  at  His  feet. 


VII. 

MODERN   HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS  ON 
CHRIST. 

Believe  that  I  am  iu  the  Father,  and  the  Father  in  Me : 
or  else  believe  Me  for  the  very  works'  sake.  — St.  John 
xiv.  11. 

OUR  Saviour  offers  here  two  reasons  why  men 
should  believe  iu  Him  ;  and  thereby  He  fore- 
shadows that  some  men  will  adopt  the  one,  and  some 
the  other.  Both  are  good  reasons,  because  both  are 
true  to  the  actual  nature  of  man  as  man.  These 
reasons  appeal  to  different  grades  of  human  feeling, 
to  different  phases  of  human  experience,  and  to  dif- 
ferent stages  of  human  speculation.  "  Believe,"  says 
our  Saviour,  "  that  I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the 
Father  in  Me."  This  is  an  appeal  to  man's  spiritual 
faculty,  innate  and  absolute,  whereby  man  knows 
holiness  when  he  sees  it,  and  knows  that  perfect  holi- 
ness is  God.  There  is  no  doubt  that  the  historic 
Christ  of  the  Gospels  was  what  we  mean  by  holy. 
If  only  you  will  open  your  souls  wide  and  steadily  to 
the  vision  of  My  holiness,  says  Christ,  you  will  rec- 
ognize Me  as  God.     This,  my  brethren,  was  the  topic 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST.      81 

of  our  discourse  together  on  Christmas  Day.  But 
our  Saviour  also  indicates  an  alternative  course  of 
thought,  which  may  lead  men  to  believe  in  Him, 
"  Believe  that  I  am  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father  in 
Me  :  or  else  believe  Me  for  the  very  works'  sake." 
It  is  on  this  second  line  of  thought  that  I  wish  to 
dwell   to-day. 

The  works  of  Christ  are  both  manifold  and  con- 
stant. They  have  never  ceased  to  this  hour.  We 
often  speak  as  if  all  we  can  know  of  Christ's  works  is 
what  we  can  gather  from  the  New  Testament,  —  the 
signs  and  miracles  that  He  wrought  while  Himself 
was  visible  in  the  flesh.  But  that  is  a  profound  mis- 
take, and  runs  counter  to  Christ'.s  own  declaration. 
Christ's  works  in  the  New  Testament  story  are  not 
easy  for  us  to  get  at  across  the  interval  of  the  years. 
This  is  a  step  which,  strictly  speaking,  only  scholars 
can  take  thoroughly  ;  it  involves  the  whole  question 
of  historic  origins,  and  a  deal  of  antiquarianism ; 
whereas  most  of  us  are  neither  antiquarians  nor 
scholars.  I  am  not  saying  that  there  need  be  any 
misgiving  as  to  the  outcome  of  such  investigations. 
On  the  contrary,  as  I  said  on  Christmas  Day,  I  assert 
without  fear  of  contradiction  that  in  the  whole  do- 
main of  human  history  there  is  no  ancient  history  of 
which  we  are  so  sure  as  of  the  history  of  Jesus  and 
the  beginnings  of  Christianity.  The  records  are  so 
impregnable  historically  that  those  who  impugn  them 
are  obliged  to  do  so  on  other  than  historic  grounds, 


82       HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON  CHRIST. 

—  OH  metaphysical  grounds.  It  is  the  miraculous 
that  troubles  these  doubters,  for  Christ  is  undoubt- 
edly the  miracle  of  history  ;  and  it  is  to  their  line  of 
thought  that  we  addressed  ourselves  on  Christmas 
Day.  But  the  rank  and  file  of  men  have  neither  the 
education,  the  insight,  nor  the  apparatus  to  be  either 
metaphysicians  or  accurate  historians.  Hence  if  we 
to-day  are  to  be  appealed  to  cogently  by  the  works  of 
Jesus  Christ,  it  must  be  by  Christ's  works  in  our  own 
generation.  If  we  are  going  to  put  ourselves  in  the 
attitude  of  Saint  Thomas,  —  and  remember  that  our 
Lord  had  a  blessing  for  Saint  Thomas,  even  though 
our  Lord  hinted  that  there  is  a  better  way  than  Saint 
Thomas's  of  arriving  at  the  truth,  —  if  we  are  going  to 
put  ourselves  into  the  attitude  of  Saint  Thomas,  then 
most  of  us  must  have  something  of  Christ  to  see  with 
our  own  eyes  and  touch  witli  our  own  hands,  since 
Christ's  works  in  far  Judsea  are  faint  to  us.  And  it 
is  because  many  earnest  folk,  feeling  that  they  can 
hardly  reach  those  works  of  Christ,  are  supposing 
that  there  are  no  other  works  of  Christ  which  they 
can  reach,  that  I  desire  this  morning  to  emphasize 
one  aspect  of  the  perpetual  work  of  Christ  which  is 
close  to  us,  if  only  we  will  recognize  it.  I  refer  to 
the  very  groundwork  of  our  most  modern  civilization, 
to  the  principle  that  makes  society  in  its  practical, 
tangible  operations  and  aims  what  it  is  to-day,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  what  it  used  to  be,  —  to  the  modern 
spirit  of  universal  brotherhood  ;  to  what  is  called, 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST.      83 

by  those  who  forget  Jesus,  Humanitarianism.  Ijet 
us  briefly  consider,  first,  what  this  is  and  amounts  to  ; 
and  secondly,  where  it  comes  from,  and  whether  it 
can  possibly  be  separated  from  its  source. 

No  one  who  observes  the  signs  of  the  times  can 
fail  to  be  struck  by  the  aspect  of  the  civilized  world 
in  this  matter  of  humanitarianism,  —  of  the  general 
disposition  to  bear  one  another  s  burdens,  to  help 
them  that  are  down,  to  heal  the  broken-hearted,  to 
make  easier  the  lot  of  the  poor  and  ignorant.  A  wo- 
man writes  a  novel  against  slavery,  and  next  to  the 
Bible  and  two  other  books,  it  has  a  wider  circula- 
tion than  any  other  book  in  the  world.  A  recent 
traveller  writes  a  book  against  the  Russian  atrocities 
in  Siberia,  and  anon  civilized  nations  are  not  only 
horrified,  but  take  practical  steps  to  make  that  horror 
effective.  An  Englishman  tells  of  the  misery  of  the 
lower  classes  in  London,  and  all  England  thrills  with 
responsive  charity,  to  be  measured  not  only  in  pounds 
sterling,  but  in  the  efforts  of  hundreds  of  people  to 
mend  matters  by  their  personal  self-devotion.  Capi- 
tal and  Labor  fall  once  more  into  their  innnemorial 
quarrel ;  but  to-day  what  are  they  both  most  afraid 
of?  —  of  the  iron  arm  of  the  law  ?  Not  at  all,  but  of 
the  general  public  opinion  that  neither  Capital  nor 
Labor  has  been  brotherly.  If  once  you  can  prove 
that  either  Capital  or  Labor  has  been  lacking  in  real 
humanitarianism,  they  wince  and  back  down  ;  and 
the  whole  power  of  arbitration  rests  there.    Such  are 


84      HUMANITARIANISM  DEPENDS  ON  CHRIST. 

a  few  of  the  more  conspicuous  signs,  evident  to  all 
men  ;  yet  these  are  but  signs.  There  are  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  institutions  all  over  the  known 
world,  managed  by  persons  who  are  determined  to 
alleviate  the  sorrows  and  sufferings  of  mankind. 
Nay,  this  sentiment  is  so  pervading  that  every  one  of 
us  has  caught  it  more  or  less.  It  is  in  us.  Unless 
we  resist  the  motion  of  our  own  souls,  when  we  our- 
selves come  across  cases  of  distress,  whether  physical, 
mental,  or  moral,  We  pity  them  and  try  to  help  them. 
Now  whose  work  is  this  ?  I  say  that  it  is  Christ's 
work,  —  an  historic  miracle  of  Jesus  Christ  wrought 
under  our  own  eyes.  There  is  no  doubt  of  this  to 
the  comparative  historian.  You  can  lay  your  finger 
on  the  epoch  when  tiiis  spirit  began  to  be,  and  that 
epoch  is  the  Christian  era.  And  you  can  show  that 
those  who  first  acquired  this  spirit  acquired  it  from 
Christ,  and  said  so  openly.  Before  Christ  there  is 
none  of  it.  Without  Christ  there  is  none  of  it,  ex- 
cept where  the  contagion  of  it  has  spread  to  some 
who  know  not  whence  they  caught  it,  and  the  con- 
tagion never  lingers  long  apart  from  the  germ  that 
brought  it.  Even  now,  in  China  and  India,  which 
have  not  yet  as  nations  accepted  Christ,  it  is  foreign, 
not  indigenous ;  just  as  once  it  was  foreign  every- 
where. For,  mark  you,  we  are  not  now  speaking  of 
that  natural  sympathy  which  man  has  for  his  fellow, 
even  as  beasts  for  beasts.  Such  sympathy  is  clan- 
nisli.     It  is  shown  only  to  fellows  by  natural  affinity, 


HUMANITARIANISM  DEPENDS   ON  CHRIST.      85 

whether  of  blood  or  of  general  congeniality.  Clan- 
nish benevolence  is  selfish,  and  full  of  subtile  pride. 
But  this  is  not  what  we  moderns  mean  by  benevo- 
lence and  brotherhood.  This  is  not  what  Christian 
civilization  signifies  by  humanity.  We  are  referring 
now  to  the  spirit  that  brooks  no  barriers,  no  privilege 
of  race  or  clan.  What  has  the  leper  in  the  far  Pa- 
cific island  to  do  with  me  '^  What  claim  has  the  be- 
lated civilization  of  Africa  or  of  China  upon  us  of 
the  western  world  ?  None  whatever,  unless  to  be  a 
man  is  to  be  the  brother  of  every  other  man,  bound 
to  share  with  him  of  one's  best.  This  common 
brotherhood  is  recognized  now  by  us ;  but  it  was  not 
recognized  by  the  best  of  the  World  before  Christ 
came,  nor  dreamed  of  in  their  laws.  Not  Confucius 
or  Bouddha,  not  Solon  or  Pericles,  not  Plato  or 
Epictetus,  not  Cicero  or  Seneca  or  Marcus  Aurelius 
ever  said  what  Paul  of  Tarsus  said :  "  There  is 
neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  there  is  neither  bond  nor 
free,  there  is  neither  male  nor  female  :  for  ye  are  all 
one ; "  and  they  said  not  this  because  they  could  not 
say  that  other  word  of  Paul,  "For  ye  are  all  the 
children  of  God  by  faith  in  Christ  Jesus."  It  is  un- 
necessary to  dwell  on  this  fact,  as  it  is  quite  familiar. 
But  before  we  can  appreciate  the  gravity  of  our 
subject  there  is  another  point  to  dwell  on.  This 
spirit  of  broad  humanitarianism  is  not  merely  dis- 
tinctive of  our  modern  civilization  ;  it  is  essential  to 
it,  it  has  made  it  what  it  is.     Take  it  away,  and  you 


86       HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON  CHRIST. 

take  our  very  civilization  away.  My  brethren,  the 
more  that  the  secrets  of  antiquity  are  opened  up,  the 
more  clearly  does  it  appear  that  that  which  truly  dis- 
tinguishes our  civilization  from  those  that  went  be- 
fore is  not  its  art,  nor  its  prowess,  nor  its  commerce, 
nor  its  varieties  of  government,  nor  even  its  intellect- 
uality. For  example,  some  monuments  of  Egypt, 
lately  exhumed  and  deciphered,  prove  that  thousands 
of  years  before  Christ  the  Egyptian  monarch  had  in- 
tercourse of  the  closest  and  most  intelligent  kind 
with  the  utmost  dependencies  of  his  enormous  em- 
pire. We  can  read  to-day  diplomatic  despatches 
between  him  and  the  governors  of  distant  provinces, 
which  for  accuracy  of  insigiit  and  breadth  of  states- 
manship are  equal  to  anything  in  the  diplomacy  of  a 
Bismarck  or  a  Disraeli.  It  is  likewise  with  the  arts, 
and  with  literature  and  philosophy.  Long  before  the 
Christian  era  the  ultimate  conclusions  of  tlic  wise 
men  of  J^crsia  and  Egyj^t  and  China  and  Greece  as 
to  the  problems  of  our  purely  human  knowledge, 
present  astonishing  parallels  to  the  latest  conclusions 
of  the  wise  men  of  our  age.  Almost  all  these  things 
are  double,  the  one  against  the  other.  No ;  the 
thing  which  is  peculiar  to  our  civilization,  which 
has  so  modified  our  institutions  and  methods  of 
social  government  as  to  make  them  essentially  differ- 
ent from  what  went  before,  is  our  faith  in  the  broad 
brotherhood  of  man.  This  is  the  one  original  feature 
even  in  our  theory  of  democratic  government.    There 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST,      87 

was  a  democracy  at  Athens,  but  it  covered  only  a 
small  clan,  even  of  the  Athenians,  the  great  body  of 
whom  were  slaves  of  their  own  race.  It  was  not 
humanitarian,  but  exclusive.  It  did  not  recognize 
any  rights  to  man  as  man.  Our  democracy,  in  aim 
at  least,  is  humanitarian  ;  and  if  ever  it  cease  to  be  so 
it  will  fall,  as  every  other  form  of  society  has  fallen. 

To  see  how  true  this  is,  let  us  draw  out  the  con- 
trast that  I  have  already  hinted.  All  the  main 
theories,  principles,  usages  of  the  ancient  world  were 
gathered  up  and  organized  in  the  vast  empire  of 
Rome.  Rome  was  the  heir  of  all  the  ages,  the  sur- 
vival of  their  fittest.  Roman  hardihood  and  pa- 
tience, Roman  sagacity  and  ability  to  rule,  Roman 
comprehensiveness  and  loftiness  of  heart  had  made 
of  heathendom  the  best  that  could  be  made  of  it.  All 
that  the  powers  of  this  world  alone  mean  by  "  impe- 
rial "  was  realized  in  Rome.  Yet  even  Rome  failed. 
Weighed  in  the  balances  through  many  a  lingering  age, 
she  was  finally  found  wanting.  Even  masterful  gov- 
ernors like  Trajan  and  the  Antonines,  even  scientific 
legislators  like  Justinian,  even  heroes  like  Belisarius, 
could  not  save  lier.  And  the  whole  enlightened 
world  despaired  to  see  her  perish.  The  wreck  was 
so  complete,  the  disorder  so  intense,  the  catastrophe 
so  astonishing,  that  the  end  of  all  social  order 
seemed  to  have  arrived.  The  human  cosmos  was 
thought  to  have  reverted  to  chaos.  But  in  the  heart 
of  that   gloom  and    desolation  a  new  principle  of 


88       HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS  ON  CHRIST. 

ordered  life  was  working.     The  barbarians  guessed 
not  that  in  abolishing  the  old  order  they  were  them- 
selves making  the  ways  straight  for  the  new.     The 
principle  of  force  had  failed,  as  it  must  always  fail ; 
for  force  without  love  is  devilish,  and  the  devil  has 
been  from  the  beginning  a  destroyer.      But  where 
force  had  failed,   brotherly  kindness  could  prevail ; 
for  brotherly  kindness  is  humanitarian,  —  takes  man 
for  what  he  is,  is  independent  of  the  shifting  surfaces 
of  human  usage,  goes  deeper  than  any  exterior  form 
of  government,  any  local  type  of  society,  and  "  mak- 
eth  all  things  new."     In  the  long  run  you  cannot 
treat  any  portion  of  human  society  as  slaves  or  dum- 
mies  or   chattels ;    all    we   have  rights,  all  we  are 
brothers,  children  of  our  Father  which  is  in  heaven. 
The  cohesive  force  of  our  modern  society  is  the  force 
of  fact ;  for  love  is  tlie  fact  of  life,  wherever  life  has 
thriven  ;  it  is  grounded  in  tJie  nature  of  things.      So 
long  as  this  world  stands,  and   man   stands  on  it, 
there  is  but  one  rule  that  can  permanently  control 
him  and  advance  him,  —  the  rule  of  thorough,  com- 
prehensive love.     Love  recognizes  man  for  what  he 
is,   recognizes  the  inalienable    brotherhood  of  man. 
That  is  humanitarianism.     There   were   empires   of 
old,  as  to-day  ;  there  were  oligarchies  and  democra- 
cies of  old,  as  to-day  ;  but  these  were  none  of  them 
thoroughly  humanitarian,  and  on  that  rock  they  fell. 
They  were  one  and  all  exclusive,  selfish.      Except 
within  a  narrow  range,  they  shut  their  eyes  to  the 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON  CHRIST.      89 

ftindaraental  fact  of  human  society.  They  were  blind 
leaders  of  the  blind,  and  so  both  governors  and 
governed  fell  into  the  ditch. 

To-day  it  is  otherwise.  Society  has  got  the  clue 
to  its  own  life.  Society  may  drop  its  clue,  and  has 
done  so  from  time  to  time,  and  has  come  to  grief  in 
so  doing.  Again  and  again  in  the  Christian  era  there 
have  been  setbacks,  disasters,  revolutions,  reigns  of 
terror.  But  the  clue  to  the  labyrinth,  the  word  of 
the  enigma,  has  been  once  for  all  declared ;  and  in 
each  successive  period  of  modern  revolution  it  has 
been  this  one  clue  only  that  hitherto  has  wrought 
salvation.  It  may  well  be  that  every  existing  form 
of  civilized  government  is  destined  to  go  to  pieces 
again  for  its  sins.  Sin  and  penalty  go  always  close 
together.  Just  so  far  as  the  modern  methods  of 
society  are  not  saturated  with  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tian brotherhood,  they  are  bound  to  give  place  to 
better  ones.  It  may  be  that  autocratic  Russia,  and 
bureaucratic  Germany,  and  republican  America  are 
to  experience  the  wreck  of  all  their  present  institu- 
tions ;  that  our  systems  of  capital  and  labor,  of 
taxation  and  the  tenure  of  property,  of  popular  rep- 
resentation and  the  government  by  united  States  are 
to  be  upset  entirely.  But  if  it  be  so,  that  which  is 
destined  to  upset  them  is  no  longer  blind  barbarism, 
but  this  very  instinct  of  broad  brotherhood  which 
has  become  part  and  parcel  of  the  soul-power  of  man- 
kind, and  is  forever  impatient  of  tyranny.      And  the 


90       HUMANITARIANISM  DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST. 

principle  that  wrecks  will  be  also  the  principle  that 
rebuilds.  Foreboding  pessimists  foretell  that  the 
Nihilists  and  Anarchists  will  subvert  our  latter-day 
civilization,  even  as  the  older  was  subverted ;  but 
have  the  pessimists  no  eyes  to  see  that  the  principle 
of  the  subversion  will  be  different  ?  that  whereas  the 
old  barbarians  were  yearning  for  sheer  force,  there  is 
working  at  the  heart  of  our  modern  revolutionists 
another  principle,  —  a  creative  principle,  a  real  hu- 
manitarian principle  ?  However  blindly  it  may  at 
first  be  working,  the  idea  of  wide  human  brother- 
hood is  at  the  heart  of  these  moving  multitudes  ; 
and  it  is  only  because  the  upper  classes  have  so  far 
forgotten  themselves  as  to  be  selfish,  and  have  out- 
raged their  own  standards  in  their  treatment  of  their 
humbler  fellows,  that  now  they  are  quaking  on  their 
thrones.  That  which  makes  our  upper  classes 
tremble  is  not  so  nmch  their  lack  of  power  as  their 
consciousness  that  they  have  been  lacking  in  love. 
Their  own  consciences  are  pricking  them,  because 
they  cannot  forget  what  Christ  has  taught  them. 
But  the  old  Roman  conscience  was  not  aware  of  its 
lack  of  love.  The  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ  had 
not  yet  reached  it  then.  Our  revolutionists  may  be 
powerful  against  renegade  Christians,  but  they  have 
no  power  against  the  truth  of  Christ.  Once  re- 
vealed, humanitarianism  is  impregnable,  because  man 
is  man.  When  "  the  tyranny  is  over-past,"  be  it  a 
tyranny  of  the  classes  or  the  masses,  the  law  of  love 
will  prevail  again  and  again,  because  God  is  love. 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST.       91 

The  beginnings  of  this  new  gospel  were  scarcely 
noticed  when  Rome  was  tottering  to  her  fall.  In 
the  vicissitude  of  their  fortunes  and  the  complexity 
of  affairs  even  those  who  did  accept  it  at  that  time 
did  not  perceive  that  it  would  work  any  change  in 
this  world.  They  thought  it  was  so  other-worldly  that 
it  had  nought  to  do  with  this  world,  —  that  it  was  a 
pure  gospel  of  eternity  and  heaven,  out  of  touch 
with  earth  and  time.  Those  early  disciples  of  the 
law  of  human  brotherhood  fled  from  the  prevailing 
anarchy  to  the  desert  and  the  cloister.  But  they 
found  their  mistake,  and  soon  came  back  again.  For 
the  essence  of  their  own  gospel  was  that  the  God 
of  the  next  world  is  also  the  God  of  this  world ;  that 
the  true  principles  of  time  are  one  with  the  princi- 
ples of  eternity ;  that  human  morality  is  eternal 
morality,  because  it  is  simply  the  expression  of  God's 
character  as  approximated  to  by  man  ;  that  mankind 
must  succeed  if  handled  as  brothers,  because  God  is 
the  Father  of  us  all.  God  is  the  one  tie  that  really 
binds  us,  and  if  we  recognize  that  tie  we  live. 

If,  then,  you  want  to  see  some  work  of  Jesus  Christ 
whereby  to  believe  on  Him  ;  if  you  want  to  feel  the 
actual  pressure  of  His  miraculous  power,  you  are  not 
relegated  to  the  dim  wonders  of  the  New  Testament. 
This  work  of  Jesus  is  before  your  very  eyes,  it  is  in 
your  very  heart.  The  one  cohesive  and  expansive 
power  of  our  modern  civilization,  the  one  thing  that 
differentiates  it  essentially  from  all  previous  civiliza- 


92       HUMANITAEIANISM   DEPENDS  ON  CHRIST. 

tions,  is  this  same  humanitarianism  ;  this  grand,  pro- 
gressive echo  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  "  Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  And  it  is  be- 
cause Christ  not  only  proclaimed  this  gospel,  but 
realized  it  in  Himself,  that  He  is  the  most  modern 
man.  He  is  what  the  humanitarians  want  to  be.  All 
that  is  most  vital  in  our  recent  society  is  real- 
ized in  Him,  completely  realized  in  Him  alone. 
The  service  of  man  by  man  is  perfected  in  Him. 
All  the  other  great  figures  that  cross  the  stage  of 
ancient  history  are  ancient  to  us.  In  much  of 
their  life  and  aims  and  views  even  a  Plato  and  a 
Csesar  are  out  of  touch  with  us.  But  Jesus  is  never 
antiquated.  He  breathes  our  language  ;  our  hearts 
and  wills  are  fired  by  His  ideal.  Familiarity,  which 
scorches  and  shrivels  so  many  reputations  in  the  esti- 
mate of  those  who  are  admitted  to  close  intimacy, 
leaves  the  estimate  of  this  Person  undamaged.  To- 
day more  than  ever  before,  —  to-day,  when  amidst  the 
dry  and  drastic  years  of  laborious  inquiry  it  appears 
as  if  the  scientific  historians  were  merciless,  spoiling  the 
fair  seeming  of  so  many  of  our  old-time  heroes  and 
dissolving  their  virtues  into  myths,  —  to-day  there  is 
left  to  us  this  one  Figure  before  whom  the  sharpest 
criticism  is  reverent,  not  merely  because  it  cannot  dis- 
pose of  Him  as  aught  else  than  historic  fact,  but  also 
because  the  fact  of  His  actual  life  agrees  with  the  best 
facts  of  ours.  He  is  the  Rock  whence  we  are  hewn. 
Now  more  than  ever  before  ;  now,  at  this  moment  in 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON   CHRIST.      93 

the  progress  of  mankind,  when  the  effort  to  achieve 
and  make  vivid  our  common  manhood  and  to  carry 
out  into  the  lowest  strata  of  society  the  principle  of 
humanitarianism  is  nearest  to  success ;  now,  when 
even  the  ties  of  nationality  are  being  blended  and 
transfigured  in  the  larger  bonds  of  a  world-wide  be- 
ing ;  now,  when  touches  of  human  tenderness,  even 
more  than  human  enterprise,  are  making  the  whole 
world  kin ;  now  when  the  story  of  the  Christ  life  is 
being  read  more  generally  than  ever  before,  until 
copies  of  it  have  penetrated  to  the  workman's  hovel 
and  the  miner's  cabin  and  the  Siberian  exile's  prison  ; 
now,  when  the  very  revolutionists  will  tell  you,  in  their 
wild  but  earnest  accents,  that  in  spite  of  their  ignor- 
ant extravagance  they  are  recognizing  in  that  gracious 
human  Figure  of  the  Gospels  the  ideal  of  their 
hearts,  the  very  sort  of  Manhood  which  is  in  closest 
touch  with  their  imperfect  manhood,  even  as  It  has 
been  the  aim  of  our  more  conservative  legislation  and 
the  object  of  our  better  regulated  schooling, — now 
is  a  poor  time  to  persuade  us  that  in  realizing  the  ex- 
ample we  can  repudiate  the  Exemplar ;  that  behind 
this  work  of  Christ  there  stands  no  present  Worker 
who  is  Christ ;  that  our  inadequate  portrait  has  no 
original ;  that  the  historic  life  of  Christ  is  immaterial 
to  the  Christian  idea.  If  our  wills  are  not  yet  strong 
enough,  our  hearts  not  yet  pure  enough,  our  con- 
sciences not  yet  so  peremptory  as  to  compel  us  to 
believe  that  Christ  is  in  the  Father,  and  the  Father 


94       HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS  ON   CHRIST. 

in  Him,  we  can  yet  believe  Him  for  His  very  works' 
sake.  For  if  history  shows  anything,  it  shows 
this :  that  whenever  men  cease  allegiance  to  the 
actual  Jesus  of  history,  they  lose  sooner  or  later  their 
ability  to  imitate  His  example.  This  spring  must  be 
drunk  at  its  source.  We  cannot  be  philanthropists 
for  long  without  vital  faith  in  the  one  complete  Phil- 
anthropist. Now  philanthropy  is  the  secret  of  our 
modern  life  ;  if  it  should  pass  out  of  our  institutions, 
our  institutions  themselves  must  cease  to  be.  They 
would  rot  with  the  rubbish  of  the  ages.  i\.nd  it  is 
the  mystery  of  Christianity  that  you  cannot  lean  on 
Christianity  without  leaning  upon  Christ,  our  Elder 
Brother.  It  is  He  who,  as  He  Himself  prophesied 
to  St.  John  on  Patmos,  forever  "  maketh  all  things 
new." 

My  brothers,  I  have  not  dwelt  on  this  subject  be- 
cause I  doubt  that  you  believe  in  Jesus.  I  know 
that  you  do  ;  that  nearly  all  of  us  do  ;  that  nearly  all 
of  us  can  at  least  say  honestly,  "  Lord  T  believe  ; 
help  thou  mine  unbelief"  But  is  it  not  well  that 
every  one  of  us  should  see  the  issue  ;  should  be 
aware  how  closely  it  is  bound  up  with  this  modern 
secular  life  of  ours,  that  sometimes  tempts  us  away 
from  Christ ;  that  in  proportion  as  we  believe  in- 
tensely in  the  historic  Saviour,  and  persuade  our 
children  and  our  friends  to  do  so,  we  do  most  to 
assure  that  very  civilization  on  which  mankind  de- 
pends ?     Sometimes  as  we  contemplate  the  immen- 


HUMANITARIANISM   DEPENDS   ON  CHRIST.      95 

sity  of  the  problems  of  mankind,  the  risks  that  men 
are  running,  the  importunacy  of  their  wants,  it  seems 
as  if  we,  with  our  meagre  resources,  our  small  leisure, 
were  powerless  to  meet  them.  Like  the  first  disci- 
ples among  the  Galilean  multitude,  we  have  a  little 
bread  ;  but  what  is  that  among  so  many  ?  Is  it  not 
well,  then,  in  such  moments  of  despondency,  that  we 
should  recollect  that  the  most  essential  help  to  be 
rendered  to  mankind  is  help  that  each  one  of  us  can 
render ;  to  cherish  in  ourselves,  and  to  spread  by  our 
example  that  personal  devotion  to  Jesus  which  is  the 
first  cause,  and  the  final  cause,  of  that  principle  of 
brotherhood  on  which  society  depends  ?  Therein,  at 
any  rate,  we  can  be  workers  togethei*  with  Christ. 


VIII. 

POSSESSING  ALL   THINGS    BECAUSE   POS- 
SESSED  OF  CHRIST. 

Many  shall  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  in- 
creased. —  Daniel  xii.  4. 

The  wisdom  of  this  world  is  foolishness  with  God.  For  it 
is  written,  He  taketh  the  wise  in  their  own  craftiness.  And 
again,  The  Lord  knoweth  the  thoughts  of  the  wise,  that  they 
are  vain.  Therefore  let  no  man  glory  in  men  :  for  all  things 
are  yours ;  .  .  .  and  ye  are  Christ's,  and  Christ  is  God's.  — 
1  Cor.  iii.  19,  20,  21,  23. 

T  HAVE  put  together  these  two  widely  sundered 
passages  of  Scripture,  because  in  a  real  sense 
they  belong  together.  The  Old  Testament  prophe- 
sies a  fact;  the  New  Testament  shows  what  the 
Christian  can  make  of  the  fact  when  it  comes.  In 
the  Book  of  Daniel  visions  of  this  world's  last  days 
are  told  to  us  ;  but  before  the  very  last  days  there  is 
to  be  another  important  epoch,  and  of  that  too  Daniel 
has  a  vision ;  and  this  is  what  he  says  of  it :  "  Many 
shall  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  shall  be  multi- 
plied." Speed  and  publicity,  these  are  the  marks  of 
the  time  that  goes  before  the  very  last  time.  When 
an  artist  paints  a  portrait,  he  essays  to  seize  what  is 
typical  in  the  person  who  sits  to  him.     Many  other 


POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS.  97 

faces  have  been  before  him  with  features  which  in 
general  were  like  these ;  but  in  these  features  there 
is  a  certain  something  which  renders  them  peculiar. 
What  is  the  characteristic  of  this  face?  the  artist 
asks  himself.  And  if  we  ask  ourselves,  What  are  the 
characteristics  of  our  time  ?  can  we  deny  that  in  this 
passage  of  my  text  Daniel  foresaw  them  exactly? 
When  did  mankind  ever  speed  so  thoroughly  to  and 
fro  across  the  earth  as  they  are  speeding  now  ?  When 
was  knowledge  ever  so  multiplied  as  now  ?  Speed 
and  publicity  are  the  signs  of  these  times.  It  is  lit- 
erally true  that  the  spread  of  human  discovery  in  this 
one  past  centui-y  has  been  as  great  as  in  the  previous 
twenty-five  centuries.  Steam,  wire,  tube,  spark,^  — 
these  are  the  methods  and  the  engines  in  our  hands  ; 
and  the  peculiar  advantages  that  we  reap  from  them 
are  rapidity  of  intercourse  and  universality  of  knowl- 
edge. The  whole  earth  is  opened  up  to  the  survey 
of  all  with  greater  and  greater  security.  The  powers 
of  civilization,  the  treasures  of  art,  the  implements  of 
business,  the  discoveries  of  science,  the  theories  of 
the  wise,  the  vagaries  of  the  foolish,  and  the  expe- 
rience of  all,  are  scattered  broadcast  at  the  disposal 
of  all  mankind.  The  resources  of  the  entire  world, 
hitherto  confined  and  divided,  are  now  transferred 
into  a  common  stock,  and  the  swiftness  of  our  new 

1  This  phrase  is  borrowed  from  cue  of  Canon  Scott  Holland's  ser- 
mons ;  but  at  this  distance  from  my  library  I  cannot  make  the  ref- 
erence more  definite. 

7 


98  POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS. 

information  is  as  marvellous  as  the  abundance  of  it. 
Men  run  to  and  fro,  and  knowledge  is  increased. 
Daniel's  vision  is  fulfilled. 

And  Saint  Paul  foresaw  the  same  thing.  With  fine 
prophetic  eye,  looking  out  on  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tianity among  the  Gentiles,  he  wrote  to  the  Corin- 
thians, "  All  things  are  yours."  Yet  along  with  the  ad- 
vantages of  the  situation,  Saint  Paul  had  the  insight 
to  perceive  also  its  disadvantages,  and  the  only  cure 
for  them.  It  is  one  thing  to  have  the  world  at  one's 
disposal,  quite  another  to  possess  the  world ;  and  in 
order  actually  to  possess  the  world,  one  must  be  one's 
self  possessed  by  Christ,  and  through  Christ  by  God. 
All  things  are  yours,  he  says,  provided  ye  are  pos- 
sessed of  Christ.  Otherwise  the  wisdom  of  this 
world  confuses  and  exhausts  itself,  and  defeats  itself. 
The  wisdom  of  those  who  are  without  God  in  the 
world  is  foolishness  after  all.  They  are  taken  in  their 
own  craftiness. 

Is  not  Saint  Paul's  view  of  the  situation  true  ?  and 
has  not  the  truth  of  it  come  right  home  to  you  and 
me,  my  brothers  ?  The  spectacle  of  our  day  is  the 
spectacle  of  men  of  great  ability  and  most  varied 
attainments  giving  themselves  with  zeal  to  the  task 
of  widening  the  area  of  knowledge,  and  rendering  the 
avenues  to  it  accessible.  The  impulse  of  our  wise 
men  is  no  longer,  as  in  the  middle  ages,  to  store  up 
their  knowledge  in  the  hidden  hive  and  keep  it  as 
the  perquisite  of  the  few.    The  very  best  and  newest 


POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS.  99 

information  shall  be  offered  to  the  humblest,  the 
youngest,  the  most  ignorant.  Knowledge  shall  have 
no  privileges,  no  fear,  no  favour.  It  is  a  noble  ambi- 
tion. God's  own  word  justifies  it ;  and  superficially 
it  has  had  great  success.  To-day  knowledge  covers 
the  w  orld  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea.  Here  is  one 
decisive  indication  of  this :  the  statistics  of  a  prom- 
inent circulating  library  show  that  the  books  for 
which  the  demand  among  working  men  is  most  con- 
stant and  most  keen,  are  the  following :  Darwin's 
"Descent  of  Man,'  Huxley's  "Physiography,"  Her- 
bert Spencer's  "  Sociology,"  Carl  Marx's  "  Capital, " 
Sir  Henry  INIaine's  "  P]ssays  "  and  "  Popular  Govern- 
ment," Bax's  "  Religion  of  Socialism,"  Proctor's 
"  Other  Worlds  than  Ours,"  Sir  John  Lubbock's 
"  Ants,  Bees,  and  Wasps,"  the  "  International  Scien- 
tific Series,"  the  "  Men  of  Letters "  series,  "  History 
of  England,"  "  History  of  the  United  States,"  Henry 
George's  "  Progress  and  Poverty."  Now  these  books 
are  not  novels.  They  are  solid,  stiff  reading,  — 
books  by  teachers  who  have  trained  themselves  to 
give  simplicity  and  polish  and  clearness  to  the  learn- 
ing that  has  been  won  with  difficulty  by  the  author, 
and  cannot  without  close  attention  be  acquired  by 
the  reader.  And  this  is  the  stuff  that  our  artisans 
are  reading,  —  the  young  men  and  the  young  women 
in  our  tenements,  who  see  in  education  the  physician 
that  shall  heal  their  sicknesses  and  open  out  the  pos- 
sibilities of  life.     God  bless  them !     They  are  on  the 


100  POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS. 

right  track,  —  the  track  that  has  been  already  sanc- 
tioned by  their  Saviour,  when  he  said :  "  Ye  shall 
know  the  truth,  and  the  truth  shall  make  you  free/' 
Whatever  the  mistakes  of  some  of  their  teachers 
may  be,  these  men  and  women  are  impelled  by  an 
impulse  straight  from  God  Most  High.  They  may 
not  know  it  in  their  present  restlessness  and  crude- 
ness,  but  although  tliey  oftentimes  rush  in  where 
wiser  men  refrain,  their  inmost  souls  are  saying  to 
their  Heavenly  Father  what  Moses  of  old  said  to 
Him  :  "  Show  me  Thy  glory." 

But  I  must  not  linger  to  talk  of  these.  I  must 
speak  of  ourselves.  We  in  our  different  stations  are 
also  on  the  same  quest.  The  rush  of  the  new  knowl- 
edge, its  multiplicity  and  apparent  incongruity,  has 
affected  you  and  me.  We  have  been  at  one  and  the 
same  time  stimulated  and  staggered  by  it ;  and  in  our 
confusion  we  have  been  tempted  to  conclude  that  all 
wisdom  is  vain,  whereas  it  is  only  the  wisdom  of  the 
world  that  is  vain.  All  things  are  ours  if  we  are 
Christ's.  We  call  ourselves  Christians.  We  bear 
Christ's  sign  on  our  foreheads.  We  partake  of  Christ's 
Body  and  Blood  at  the  altar.  What  will  Christ  do 
for  us,  if  we  allow  Him  really  to  possess  us  ?  How 
will  he  enlighten  us,  and  steady  us,  and  give  us 
a  clue,  as  we  are  hurried  onward  on  the  rushing 
stream  of  knowledge  that  floods  the  world  to-day  ? 

This  is  a  great  subject,  and  there  are  many  sides 
to  it.     In  a  single  sermon  I  can  but  touch  it  at  two 


POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS.  101 

or  three  points,  leaving  much  unsaid  that  ought  to 
be  said  and  to  be  felt,  by  thorough  Christian  thinkers. 
But  the  little  actually  expressed  may,  by  the  Holy 
Spirit's  blessing,  lead  us  in  our  private  reflections  to 
perceive  much  more. 

1.  Let  us  dvv^ell  first  on  the  matter  of  our  per- 
sonal independence,  our  sense  of  rational  and  spirit- 
ual individuality.  Unquestionably  the  first  effect  of 
all  this  flood  of  quick  and  various  information  is  to 
intensify  our  consciousness  of  our  own  individuality. 
To  hear  and  read  all  these  discoveries  and  speculations 
and  achievements  of  countless  other  people  is  like 
being  in  a  great  crowd.  And  the  excitement  of  it 
has  this  singular  effect :  contrary  to  what  might  have 
been  expected,  the  crowd,  so  far  from  lessening  the 
individual  in  his  own  eyes,  magnifies  him.  He  does 
not  append  himself  to  the  crowd,  but  the  crowd  to 
himself  The  patriot  or  the  soldier,  for  example, 
does  not  feel  himself  a  smaller  man  for  being  one  of 
a  great  army  ;  on  the  contrary,  he  takes  into  himself 
all  the  thrill  of  their  impulses  and  the  spectacle  of 
their  splendid  action,  and  is  bigger  and  braver  on  ac- 
count of  them.  Their  will  is  his  will ;  their  exploits 
and  their  self-sacrifice  are  focussed  in  him  ;  all  their 
patriotisiji  is  his.  In  a  similar  way  our  modern  con- 
sciousness, as  individuals,  of  what  the  whole  world  is 
thinking  and  endeavoring  —  this  new  rapidity  with 
which  the  speculations  of  the  many  become  the  prop- 
erty of  each  one  —  intensifies  each  separate  person's 


102  POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS. 

sense  of  individuality.  That  is  the  first  effect.  But 
a  different  effect  soon  follows.  These  sudden  specu- 
lations that  sweep  up  to  us  from  all  sides  are  full  of 
contradictions.  The  inferences  of  them  seem  to  lead 
us  different  ways  ;  and  to  sift  them  thoroughly  would 
require  years  on  years  and  an  equipment  that  very 
few  of  us  have,  a  faculty  of  discrimination  and  in- 
sight that  special  training  alone  can  furnish.  So  our 
first  exhilaration  is  succeeded  by  discouragement. 
Who  is  equal  to  these  things,  to  this  superabundance 
of  knowledge  ?  "  He  that  increaseth  knowledge  in- 
creaseth  sorrow." 

But  here  our  faith  in  Jesus  Christ,  the  influence  of 
His  education,  comes  in  to  counteract  this  result. 
Christianity  intensifies  once  more,  and  from  a  dif- 
ferent side,  our  personal  independence  and  our  intel- 
lectual courage.  The  whole  stress  of  Christ's  message 
is  to  the  individual  soul,  to  the  one  lost  sheep,  to 
the  units  in  the  mass.  Mankind  is  all  mass  to  the 
modern  human  eye,  but  it  is  all  individual  to  the 
Divine  Eye  :  and  the  Ciu'istian  is  taught  to  feel  that 
Eye  always  upon  him,  about  his  path,  about  his  bed, 
spying  out  all  his  ways.  And  the  influence  of  this 
feeling,  moral  to  begin  with,  ends  by  being  intellect- 
ual also.  C*hristianity  does  not  merely  develop  man's 
sense  of  personal  accountability  for  his  acts  and 
thoughts  as  right  or  wrong,  but  also  as  false  or  true. 
All  this  mass  of  apparently  discordant  knowledge 
and  speculation  that  overwhelms  the  individual  from 


POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS  103 

without,  —  all  this,  the  Christian  says  to  himself,  is 
of  no  avail,  of  no  value,  of  no  sense,  except  as  the 
apprehension  and  the  achievement  of  so  many  single 
minds,  of  so  many  distinct  and  personal  thinkers. 
The  whole  mass  of  this  knowledge  sprang  from  the 
steady  thinking  of  single  minds.  Each  one  of  those 
discoverers  and  philosophers  has  done,  or  ought  to 
have  done,  what  I  must  do,  —  has  had  to  use  his  own 
eyes  and  ears,  to  ponder  by  his  own  reason,  to  test 
by  his  own  conscience  and  experience  of  life  the 
various  data  of  knowledge  that  have  come  to  him, 
and  to  feel  the  loneliness  of  it  all.  The  intellectual 
conscience  speaks  clearly  and  constantly  in  the  Chris- 
tian soul.  The  appeal  of  the  great  Demosthenes  to 
the  Greeks  of  Attica  in  a  trying  moment  of  their  his- 
tory was,  "  In  God's  name,  I  beg  you  to  think  ! " 
And  it  is  with  a  keener  interest,  a  truer  sympathy, 
and  an  authority  infinitely  superior,  that  Christ  ap- 
peals to  all  Christians  of  to-day,  to  think  each  for 
himself.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  real  knowledge 
except  it  be  personal  knowledge.  All  this  informa- 
tion that  comes  to  me  from  the  wide,  wide  world, 
when  reduced  to  its  elements,  is  nothing,  is  mere 
rumor,  except  in  so  far  as  it  is  the  veritable  acquisi- 
tion of  just  such  single  minds  as  mine  ;  and  it  never 
is  knowledge  to  me  unless  and  until  I  have  made  it 
mine ;  and  I  cannot  make  it  mine,  except  by  testing, 
scrutinizing  and  comparing  it  with  all  else  that  I 
know.     To  ask  a  personal  soul  to  doubt  or  recklessly 


104  POSSESSING   ALL  THINGS. 

to  throw  away  what  he  by  his  own  life  has  come  to 
know,  for  the  sake  of  a  second-hand  report  of  what 
other  souls  like  his  claim  that  they  know,  is  to  ask 
him  to  commit  intellectual  suicide.  What  shall  a 
man  give  in  exchange  for  his  own  soul  ?  There  is 
nothing  in  all  this  superabundant  report  of  other 
people's  knowledge  to  abash  or  worry  me,  for  their 
knowledge  is  not  my  knowledge  until  by  patient  re- 
flection and  experience  my  mind  has  grasped  it  and 
digested  it.  Until  I  know  it  in  this,  the  only  way 
that  anything  can  be  really  known  by  anybody,  this 
general  mass  of  other  people's  knowledge  is  to  me 
mere  rumor  ;  and  no  sane  man,  no  independent  per- 
sonal thinker  will  allow  himself  to  be  upset  by 
rumor.  My  mind  has  a  being  of  its  own  ;  has  had  a 
history  of  its  own  ;  my  intellectual  integrity,  no  less 
than  my  moral  integrity,  has  been  sanctioned  by  God 
who  made  me,  and  by  Christ  who  cared  for  me  enough 
to  save  me,  —  me,  by  myself  alone.  Into  this  actual 
life  of  mine,  —  into  the  limits  of  my  mental  and 
moral  powers,  must  come  and  be  appropriated  all  the 
information  of  the  vaster  world,  before  it  means 
much  to  me,  before  T  have  any  reason  to  allow  it  to 
disquiet  me.  This  is  what  steadies  me  in  the  speed 
and  publicity  of  modern  civilization.  Human  knowl- 
edge is  a  continuous  personal  product,  a  conscientious 
product,  an  individual  product ;  and,  so  far  as  you 
and  I  are  concerned,  the  only  meaning  of  it  is  pre- 
cisely due   to  that   fundamental    fact  which   Jesus 


POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS.  105 

Christ  revealed  :  the  independent  personality  of  your 
soul  and  my  soul. 

Nay,  we  have  not  yet  touched  the  bottom  of  the 
matter,  for  there  the  Incarnation  comes  in.  It  is  a 
mystery  no  man  can  fathom,  but  the  Christian  knows 
and  believes  to  his  soul's  health  that  in  the  eternal 
Person  of  Jesus  Christ  the  mind  of  man  became 
united  to  the  Divine  Mind,  even  as  Saint  Paul  says 
in  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  :  "  Christ  in  whom  are 
hid  all  the  treasures  of  wisdom  and  knowledge." 
There  is  the  final  guarantee  of  the  integrity  of  each 
man's  mind,  in  the  face  of  all  the .  pressure  of  the 
confusing  information  and  speculation  of  mankind  : 
that  God  Almighty  and  All-Wise  regards  the  human 
mind  as  capable  of  communion  and  of  union  with  His 
mind.  Thus  the  Incarnation  guarantees  to  each  and 
every  man  the  integrity  of  his  mind.  If  true  to  God 
and  true  to  myself,  I  have  all  eternity  before  me  in 
which  to  master  all  there  is  to  know.  Truth  at  large 
and  in  the  mass,  as  it  comes  to  each  of  us  so  swiftly 
by  the  myriad  voices  of  fallible  mankind,  is  indeed 
bewildering ;  but  the  God  of  Truth  is  a  still  small 
Voice  speaking  in  each  man's  soul,  and  He  will  lead 
us  slowly  but  eternally  into  all  that  belongs  to  Him. 
"  All  things  are  yours  ;  for  ye  are  Christ's,  and  Christ 
is  God's." 

2.  Closely  connected  with  this  is  the  second  point 
on  which  we  ought  to  dwell.  It  is  the  temptation 
of  the  natural  man  to  suppose  that  truth  comes  to 


106  POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS. 

man  by  one  method  alone.  These  world-wide  ru- 
mors of  knowledge  that  float  to  us  and  past  us  in 
these  rapid  days,  —  we  are  too  apt  to  fancy  that 
there  is  but  one  way  in  which  we  can  test  them,  — 
the  way  of  pure  reason  ;  and  reason  is  soon  fatigued. 
As  all  these  data  of  modern  knowledge  are  presented 
to  us  in  their  richness  and  complexity,  we  are  tempted 
to  suppose  that  there  is  nothing  for  us  to  do  with  them 
but  to  speculate  about  them, — to  lie  back  and  think, 
and  think,  —  and  that  if  we  could  only  get  time  to 
think  long  enough  and  deep  enough,  we,  or  some  very 
clever  person,  might  master  them,  —  might  form  a 
judgment  about  them  which  would  be  quite  true. 
But  this  is  a  disastrous  mistake.  Pure  intellectual 
speculation  is  not  only  a  practical  impossibility,  but 
if  it  were  possible,  such  speculation  would  never  be 
complete  and  tliorough  knowledge.  To  think  in 
such  wise  is  to  make  an  unreal  isolation  of  the  spec- 
ulative intellect.  Knowledge,  real  knowledge,  is  a 
view  and  an  experience  of  life  as  a  whole,  —  in  its 
hopes  and  fears,  in  its  duties  and  actions,  —  along  with 
the  analysis  of  the  more  abstract  impressions  of  the 
reason.  To  use  the  recent  illustration  of  a  brilliant 
writer :  Mf  a  man  were  to  sit  still  and  sketch  a  land- 
scape from   one  point  of  view,  he  might  indeed  be 

1  I  am  here  indebted  to  an  essay  by  Mr.  Ward,  son  of  the  au- 
thor of  "  The  Ideal  Church,"  published  last  winter  in  one  of  the 
magazines,  — I  think  it  was  "  The  Nineteenth  Century  ; "  biit  being 
now  at  a  distance  from  my  library,  I  cannot  verify  the  quotation. 


POSSESSING  ALL  THINGS.  107 

exact  in  his  picture  from  that  point,  but  he  could  not 
know  all  there  was  to  be  known  of  the  country  with- 
out using  his  faculty  of  locomotion.  Nor  could  he 
tell  by  mere  sight  the  nature  of  the  soil,  the  botany 
of  the  plants  that  he  jots  down  as  patches  of  color, 
the  nature  and  the  history  of  the  flying  birds  that  to 
him  are  but  dots  upon  the  sky.  Nay,  the  very  pro- 
portions that  things  take  from  the  artist's  point  of 
view  are  not  the  real  proportions.  To  him  the  tall 
hill  in  the  distance  measures  a  less  angle  than  the 
house  in  the  foreground.  Change  your  standpoint, 
vary  your  methods  of  observation,  and  these  half 
truths  are  gradually  corrected  ;  sit  down,  and  meas- 
ure reality  by  the  picture,  and  you  go  far  wrong.  In 
some  ways,  perhaps,  the  artist  is  more  striking  and 
more  industrious  and  technically  more  accurate  ;  but 
his  actual  all-round  knowledge  of  the  realities  before 
him  is  not  to  be  compared  with  that  of  many  a  man 
who  has  bestirred  himself  more  widely  and  more 
thoroughly  in  the  field. 

Now,  in  a  similar  way  no  knowledge  is  adequate 
for  human  souls  that  is  not  the  knowledge  of  the 
whole  man,  —  intellect  and  conscience  and  spirit. 
The  sceptical  mind  falls  into  the  very  relativity  and 
partiality  against  which  it  protests,  and  viewing  our 
capacities  for  knowledge  as  identical  and  co-extensive 
with  our  capacities  for  speculation,  refrains  from  the 
spiritual  movement  and  the  moral  activity  which  are 
the  natural  and  the  necessary  corrective  to  the  one- 


108  POSSESSING   ALL  THINGS. 

sidedness  and  relativity  of  purely  intellectual  views. 
And  this  is  where  the  influence  of  Jesus  intervenes. 
Christ  appeals  to  the  whole  man.  To  listen  to  Him 
and  to  follow  Him  is  to  feel  our  entire  being  roused 
into  symmetrical  action,  —  to  ask  ourselves  not 
merely,  What  can  I  know  ?  but  also,  What  ought  I 
to  do  ?  and,  What  may  1  hope  ?  What  must  I 
fear  ?  According  to  Christ,  spiritual  narrowness  or 
blindness  is  as  stultifying  as  intellectual  narrowness  ; 
and  moral  dispositions  and  genuine  moral  experience 
are  required  for  the  very  recognition  of  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  knowledge.  "  He  that  doeth  God's  will 
shall  know  of  the  doctrine. "  x\.s  you  confront  the 
speed  and  the  publicity  of  modern  knowledge  you 
must  remember  these  two  facts :  first,  that  all  real 
knowledge  is  personal,  individual  knowledge,  and 
that  no  rumor  of  other  people's  knowledge  can  law- 
fully sway  you  until  you  know  it  ;  secondly,  that 
for  you,  in  your  God-given  individuality,  to  know 
anything  really,  you  must  know  it  with  your  whole 
being,  not  speculatively  alone.  And  it  is  to  these 
two  facts  that  you  commit  yourself  when  you  call 
yourself  a  Christian.  Christ  knows  this  world  as  a 
world  of  inviolable  single  souls  ;  and  in  saving  your 
soul  and  appealing  to  it  He  is  appealing  to  the  whole 
of  you,  —  intellect  and  spirit  and  conscience  and 
will.  He  is  come  that  ye  might  have  life,  and  that 
ye  might  have  it  more  abundantly. 

3.  I  cannot  close  without  mentioning  one  thought 


POSSESSING  ALL   THINGS.  109 

more.  I  should  be  doing  wroug  to  you  aud  wrong 
to  the  truth  before  us  to  pass  it  wholly  by.  I  know, 
my  brethren,  what  experiences  many  of  you  —  men 
and  women,  young  and  old  —  are  passing  through  in 
the  secret  of  your  soul-life.  No  person  of  sane  and 
open  mind  can  see  and  hear  what  you  and  I  do,  can 
read  day  by  day,  and  year  by  year,  what  this  great 
modern  world  is  learning  and  speculating  about  from 
east  to  west,  from  pole  to  pole ;  can  notice  the 
astonishment,  the  fluctuations,  the  frequent  discour- 
agement, the  occasional  despair,  of  very  many  gifted 
thinkers  who  try  to  cope  with  the  materials  and  the 
information  that  overtask  them,  —  no  one,  no  matter 
how  true  to  Christ  he  may  be,  can  move  in  this 
modern  atmosphere  without  keen  trial.  There  is  a 
call  in  our  day  for  intellectual  martyrdom  on  the 
part  of  Christians,  and  many  such  martyrs  there  are.^ 
In  the  earlier  days  the  martyrs  were,  for  the  most 
part,  martyrs  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  heart ;  to-day 
they  are  martyrs  of  the  mind.  To  suffbr  in  the  affec- 
tions, or  in  the  bodily  senses,  was  the  first  Christian's 
task  ;  to  suffer  in  the  intellect  is  ours.  The  tempta- 
tion to  shrink  from  physical  pain,  to  devote  one's  self 
to  sensual  pleasure,  —  that  was  the  main  temptation 
of  the  average  man  in  the  days  when  paganism  was 
fighting  its  last  fight  in  ancient  Rome  that  Christ 
was  claiming.     And  the  martyrdom,  the  "  witness," 

1  I  am  here  indebted  again  to  the  author  mentioned  in  the  pre- 
vious footnote. 


110  POSSESSING   ALL  THINGS. 

that  was  needed  in  those  days  was  the  witness  of 
the  saints,  to  whom  pleasure  and  pain  were  as  notli- 
ing  in  comparison  with  Christ  and  His  righteousness. 
As  the  pagan  sensualist  looked  down  upon  the  arena 
and  saw  tlie  frail  woman  and  the  strenuous  man  con- 
front the  lions,  it  was  their  power  to  bear  the  sheer 
physical  agony,  wincing,  writhing,  but  not  flinching, 
hopeful  and  faithful  to  the  end,  —  this  was  what  con- 
vinced those  pagans  that  there  must  be  a  great 
reality  in  Jesus  who  could  work  such  marvels  among 
men.  Our  modern  witness  is  to  be  somewhat  differ- 
ent, though  in  substance  still  the  same.  To  feel  the 
tine  darts  of  modern  criticism,  to  appreciate  the  con- 
tradictions of  the  schools,  to  perceive  the  force  of  the 
objections,  to  state  them  quite  as  clearly  and  fully  as 
the  most  sceptical  person  can,  and  yet  not  to  be 
abashed  by  them  ;  to  realize  the  power  of  the  agnos- 
tic position,  and  notwithstanding  to  rest  assured  that 
no  amount  of  difficulties  need  necessitate  positive 
doubt ;  to  endure  intellectual  torture,  —  this  is  the 
task  for  us  Christians  of  to-day.  Hereby  we  wield 
our  power. 

And  need  I  tell  you  that  while  our  martyrdom  is 
different  in  kind,  the  source  of  it  is  identical  with 
that  of  the  earlier  age  ?  The  early  martyrs  were 
witnesses  to  Jesus,  and  so  must  we  be.  It  is  the 
constant  vision  of  Him  which  alone  can  nerve  us  to 
our  task  ;  and  the  influence  of  the  Christian  Church, 
the  whole  stress  of  her  authority,  is  designed  to  this 


POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS.  Ill 

great  end, — to  keep  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ 
vividly  and  vitally  before  us.  It  is  through  the 
Church  that  Christ  fulfils  His  promise,  ''  I  will  not 
leave  you  comfortless,  I  will  come  unto  you."  Ste- 
phen saw  Him  when  he  dared  the  infuriated  Jewish 
mob.  Ignatius  saw  Him  when  the  teeth  of  the  lions 
were  setting  on  his  bones.  You  and  I  must  see 
Him,  if  we  are  to  rest  assured  that  the  whole  cloud 
of  modern  scepticism,  and  the  multiplicity,  the  vast- 
ness  of  modern  information,  do  not  justify  the  slight- 
est flinching  of  our  faith.  It  is  wonderful  what  a 
power  there  is  in  reading  constantly  what  Jesus 
said,  recalling  what  He  did,  realizing  what  He  is  ; 
somewhat  as  the  young  man,  tried  by  the  tempta- 
tions of  impetuous  youth,  finds  himself  purified  and 
steadied  by  the  vivid  recollection  of  his  mother,  by 
the  irrefragable  argument  of  her  purity.  Feuerbach, 
Strauss,  Matthew  Arnold,  Huxley,  Renan,  —  with 
all  their  forcibleness,  their  learning,  their  frequent 
beauty,  their  singular  subtility,  —  are  in  the  end 
nothing  in  a  clear  view  of  the  personality  of  Jesus. 
No  matter  hoiv  He  is,  there  He  is ;  just  as  no  matter 
how  I  am,  here  I  am.  In  any  fair  view  of  the  ulti- 
mate difficulties  of  scientific  and  historic  explanation, 
it  is  just  as  hard  (and  no  harder)  to  explain  how 
man  is  as  to  explain  how  Christ  is ;  and  for  the  same 
reason  that  I  have  faith  in  myself,  I  have  it  in  Jesus 
Christ.  Given  the  fact  of  you  and  me,  Christ  corre- 
sponds to  you  and  me.     Christ  speaks  for  Himself. 


112  POSSESSING   ALL   THINGS. 

If  humanity  means  anything,  He  is  the  pattern  Man. 
If  there  is  any  sense  in  human  life,  He  is  the  Way  of 
Life.  If  there  is  any  clue  to  the  labyrinth  of  knowl- 
edge, He  is  the  Light  of  the  world.  If  there  is  any 
rest  for  us,  it  is  under  the  shadow  of  His  hand.  It 
is  only  when  we  forget  Him,  or  draw  away  from 
Him,  that  we  get  confused.  In  Him,  with  Him,  the 
clue  is  clear.  Nothing  can  be  true  as  to  this  life 
which  would  make  Christ  untrue.  Men  run  to  and 
fro,  and  knowledge  is  multiplied  ;  but  all  things  are 
yours,  —  all  real  things,  —  for  ye  are  Christ's,  and 
Christ  is  God's. 


IX. 


HOW   CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS   HUMAN 
FAITH.i 

Lord,    T    believe  ;    help    Thou   mine   unbelief.  —  Saint 
Mark,  ix.  24. 

THIS  is  the  Epiphany  season,  when  we  are 
called  to  consider  the  manifestation  of  Jesus 
to  the  world ;  and  in  this  view  I  desire  to  continue 
this  morning  the  line  of  thought  of  my  last  two  ser- 
mons. We  shall  go  over  the  same  general  ground, 
but  from  a  somewhat  different  stand-point.  Hitherto 
we  have  considered  some  of  the  reasons  for  believ- 
ing in  Christ :  first,  because  of  wliat  He  is  in  Him- 
self, —  because  of  the  appeal  which  His  evident  and 
perfect  holiness  makes  to  our  own  spiritual  faculty, 
that  knows  holiness  when  it  sees  it,  and  knows  that 
perfect  holiness  is  God ;  secondly,  we  have  seen  rea- 
sons for  believing  in  Jesus  not  only  for  what  He  is, 
but  for  what  He  has  done,  —  for  His  actual  works, 
and  in  particular  for  His  present  work  in  our  modern 
civilization,  which  depends  peculiarly  on  Christ's 
revelation  of  the  essential  brotherhood  of  men. 
These  considerations  are  cogent ;  but  they  require  a 

1  An  Epiphany  sermon. 


114  CHKIST   MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH. 

more  personal  application.  So  to-day  I  desire,  by 
God's  help,  to  make  them  personal,  —  to  show  how 
this  faith  in  Jesus  works  in  the  intimate  soul-life  of 
the  true  Christian.  In  this  connection  no  text  could 
be  more  suggestive  than  that  which  I  have  chosen, 
—  "  Lord,  I  believe  ;  help  Thou  mine  unbelief." 

This  was  said  in  one  of  those  rare  moments  of 
human  life  when  the  depths  of  our  being  are  opened 
up.  Such  moments  come  to  all  of  us,  —  times  when 
we  surprise  ourselves  and  others  by  the  unpremedi- 
tated frankness  of  our  acts  and  words,  by  their  pro- 
found reality,  by  their  disclosure  of  those  springs  of 
our  being  which  seldom  come  to  the  surface.  All 
of  us  live  for  the  most  part  on  the  surface  of  our- 
selves ;  we  move  in  shifts  and  disguises  ;  we  act  by 
partial  signs,  and  speak  in  parables.  We  are  conven- 
tional ;  conventions  are  the  clothes  by  which  we  at 
once  protect  ourselves  and  respect  ourselves.  A  man 
would  be  a  fool  to  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve  ;  yet 
all  the  while  the  unregarded  current  of  our  being 
pursues  its  way  within  us,  and  once  in  a  while,  when 
a  great  joy  or  a  great  sorrow  strikes  us,  or  when  an 
arch  enemy  puts  us  to  our  last  defence,  or  some 
friend  subdues  us  unawares  with  keen  sympathy, 
then  — 

"  A  bolt  is  shot  back  somewhere  in  our  breast, 
And  what  we  mean  we  say,  and  what  we  would  we  know  ; 
A  man  becomes  aware  of  his  life's  flow,  — 
The  hills  where  his  life  rose. 
And  the  sea  where  it  goes." 


CHRIST   MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH.         115 

And  certainly,  if  moments  of  such  self-disclosure  oc- 
cur to  all  of  us,  even  in  the  dealings  of  men  with 
men,  they  were  still  likelier  to  occur  in  the  personal 
intercourse  of  men  face  to  face  with  Christ  their 
Saviour.  Again  and  again  in  the  Gospel  story  we 
have  mention  of  this  effect  of  Jesus  Christ  upon 
those  with  whom  He  was  conversing.  "  Never  man 
spake  like  this  Man  ; "  "Come  see  a  Man  which  told 
me  all  things  that  ever  I  did ; "  "  The  people  were 
astonished  at  His  doctrine,  for  He  taught  them  as 
one  having  authority,  and  not  as  the  Scribes  ; " 
"  Jesus,  knowing  their  thoughts,  said,"  —  these  and 
other  like  passages  indicate  how  our  Saviour  pene- 
trated below  the  surface  of  men's  characters  and 
induced  them  to  reveal  themselves  to  Him.  But 
the  passage  of  our  text  is  a  capital  instance  of  this. 
It  is  the  father  of  the  lunatic  child  who  speaks. 
Influenced  by  the  mysterious  work  and  words  of 
Jesus,  this  man  had  brought  to  Him  his  suftering 
son,  feeling  dimly  that  Christ  could  heal  the  child. 
But  Jesus  has  designs  not  merely  on  the  child  but 
on  the  father;  Jesus  wishes  to  convince  the  man 
that  he  too  has  need  of  the  Divine  touch,  and  that 
on  his  willingness  to  admit  this  need  hangs  the  wel- 
fare even  of  his  child.  So  as  the  man  stands  there, 
absorbed  in  his  son's  utter  need,  Christ  throws  the 
man  back  upon  himself,  —  upon  his  own  character 
and  motives.  "  Master,"  said  the  father  to  Jesus, 
"  I  have  brought  unto  Thee  my  son.  ...  If  Thou  canst 


116  CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS   FAITH. 

do  anything,  have  compassion  on  us  and  help  us. 
Jesus  said  unto  him,  If  thou  canst  believe,  all 
things  are  possible  to  him  that  believeth.  And 
straightway  the  father  of  the  child  cried  out,  and 
said  with  tears.  Lord,  I  believe ;  help  Thou  mine 
im  belief/' 

That  disclosure  was  not  individual  only ;  it  is 
typical  of  all  men.  Every  soul,  as  man  lives  and 
struggles  on  from  birth  to  death  in  the  ways  of  this 
troublesome  world,  stands  towards  the  things  and 
creatures  about  him,  towards  the  events  in  which  he 
takes  part,  towards  the  problems  that  confront  him 
and  the  principles  that  actuate  him,  towards  his  own 
inborn  faculties  and  powers  whereby  he  thinks  and 
acts,  in  precisely  .this  same  twofold  attitude  of  soul, 
belief  and  unbelief.  This  is  a  great  subject ;  let 
us  think  of  it  to-day. 

Men  often  speak  of  faith  as  if  it  were  optional  to 
man,  as  if  a  man  may  believe  or  not  believe  ac- 
cording as  he  pleases,  —  as  if  faith,  for  example,  and 
reason  were  two  separable  conditions  of  mind ;  but 
faith  is  not  optional ;  faith  and  reason  are  not  sep- 
arable. Where  there  is  life  there  must  be  faith ; 
and  faith  is  the  first  step  of  reason,  —  the  first  and 
also  the  last.  To  believe  is  the  condition  of  reason, 
the  substance  of  reason  ;  reason  is  but  the  tool  and 
the  analysis  of  faith.  Reasoning  is  a  personal  act ; 
so  that  before  you  can  reason  about  anything  what- 
soever you  must  first  believe  in  yourself,  in  the  au- 


CHRIST  MANIFESTED  HELPS  FAITH.  117 

thority  and  the  validity  of  your  own  soul-powers. 
Before  you  can  accept  the  processes  of  your  reason- 
ing or  the  results  of  it  you  must  first  believe  in  your 
reason ;  and  before  you  reason  about  the  world  you 
must  believe  that  the  world  is  there,  and  tliat  you 
are.  The  objects  of  our  faith,  the  things  and  per- 
sons that  we  believe,  vary ;  but  without  some  belief 
not  even  life  itself  is  possible.  To  live  as  man  lives 
is  an  act  ;  and  there  is  no  such  life  without  belief, 
nor  will  there  ever  be,  not  even  in  heaven  itself. 
From  Saint  Paul's  famous  chapter  on  charity  in  the 
First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  it  is  often  rashly  con- 
cluded that  in  magnifying  charity,  and  assigning  to 
it  the  pre-eminence,  and  declaring  that  it  is  eternal, 
Saint  Paul  thereby  implies  that  hereafter  faith  will 
cease  to  be,  —  that  there  will  be  no  place  nor  scope 
for  faith  in  heaven ;  but  Saint  Paul  says  no  such 
thing ;  on  the  contrary,  he  states  expressly  that  faith, 
like  hope,  like  charity,  abideth.  It  must  abide,  it 
must  be  immortal,  if  the  soul  is,  if  reason  is,  if  love, 
if  life  is  ;  for  faith  is  the  foundation,  always  and 
everywhere,  of  reason  and  love  and  life.  When  I 
see  God  as  He  is,  I  must  still  believe  in  Him.  and  in 
myself,  if  T  am  to  know  Him  and  to  love  Him.  The 
heavenly  life  will  be  the  rectification  and  the  exten- 
sion of  our  faith,  by  no  means  the  extinction  of  it. 
The  closer  we  get  to  God  the  more  we  shall  believe 
in  Him,  and  in  ourselves  as  belonging  to  Him.  No 
one  has  such  entire  faith  in  himself  and  in  the  world 


118  CHRIST   MANIFESTED   HELPS   FAITH. 

as  the  man  who  believes  absolutely  that  he  is  God's 
child. 

But  I  am  anticipating  a  little.  Before  we  can  fol- 
low the  Bible  in  its  hints  as  to  the  function  of 
religious  faith  here  and  hereafter,  we  must  first  ap- 
prehend what  faith  in  general  is  here,  —  how  it  be- 
longs to  man  as  man,  how  it  makes  him  what  he  is  ; 
how  true  it  is  that  visible  things  require  just  as  much 
faith  on  man's  part  as  invisible  things  do.  Consider, 
then,  more  fully  for  a  moment  how  faith  is  the  tissue 
of  our  natural  life  as  reasonable  creatures.  Look 
back  and  see  how  the  first  step  forward  in  your 
rational  life  was  the  individual's  faith  in  himself 
We  were  able  to  eat  and  live  because  we  instinc- 
tively trusted  our  mouths  and  stomachs,  to  walk  be- 
cause we  trusted  our  eyes  and  legs ;  we  were  able 
to  acquire  knowledge  because  first  we  had  confi- 
dence in  our  faculties  of  mind,  and  confidence  also 
in  the  world  that  supplied  objects  of  knowledge  to 
the  mind. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  looking  at  man  as  an  indi- 
vidual ;  but  it  is  the  same  when  we  look  at  him  in 
society.  The  child's  first  social  act  is  an  act  of  faith 
in  his  parents  ;  then  as  his  little  life  enlarges,  the 
area  of  his  social  foith  widens  with  his  social  life. 
His  life  in  society  depends  upon  his  faith  in  it.  — 
upon  his  confidence  in  his  playmates,  friends,  teach- 
ers, in  his  employers  and  dependents.  Without 
these  constant  acts  of  trust  in  our  fellows,  in  their 


CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS   FAITH.         Ill) 

words  and  works,  we  could  not  buy  our  food  for  fear 
of  poison,  nor  do  our  business  for  fear  of  being 
cheated.  The  whole  commerce  of  mankind  is  one 
colossal  act  of  faith  in  mankind  ;  by  this  our  for- 
tunes are  made,  our  States  are  governed,  our  votes 
are  cast.  Faitli  in  ourselves,  in  our  fellows,  in  our 
own  past  and  the  world's  past,  in  the  facts  and 
forces  of  the  natural  universe,  —  this  is  the  very 
atmosphere  of  our  existence,  the  substance  of  our 
mental  and  moral  operations,  the  spring  of  all  our 
deeds.  When  Saint  Paul  said  that  faith  is  the 
substance  of  things  hoped  for  he  was  alluding  par- 
ticularly to  our  religious  hopes  ;  but  the  remark  is 
equally  applicable  to  hopes  of  every  kind.  Faith  is 
the  substance  of  wealth,  the  substance  of  culture, 
the  substance  of  government,  the  substance  of  hu- 
man affection,  the  substance  of  science  and  of  law. 
People  constantly  talk  as  if  faith  and  the  difficulties 
of  faith,  scepticism  and  the  motives  to  scepticism, 
were  purely  a  matter  of  religion  ;  whereas  most  argu- 
ments against  religious  faith  as  a  principle  of  action 
bear  just  as  hard  upon  social  faith,  and  commercial 
faith,  and  intellectual  and  scientific  faith.  You  can 
say  just  as  much  about  the  mistakes  of  faith  and  the 
perversions  of  it,  its  lack  of  grounds,  its  uncertain  evi- 
dences, the  intangibility  of  its  object,  —  you  can  say 
just  as  much  about  this  in  the  one  case  as  you  can 
in  the  other.  And  the  wreck  of  private  fortunes 
and  of  national  governments,  the  law's  delays  and 


120  CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH. 

time-serving,  the  cruel  disappointments  of  sincere 
affection,  the  revohitioiis  of  scientific  principles,  — 
all  go  to  show  that  human  faith  in  earthly  affairs  is 
quite  as  difficult,  quite  as  open  not  merely  to  theo- 
retical objections  but  to  objections  based  on  the 
results  of  experience,  as  is  religious  faith.  Faith  is 
so  truly  an  elementary  energy  of  the  human  per- 
sonality that  it  enters  into  all  the  forms  and  phases 
of  man's  activity.  To  say  that  it  is  difficult  to  be- 
lieve rightly  is  no  more  than  to  say  that  it  is  difficult 
to  live  rightly.  This  is  why  the  Bible  presupposes 
faith.  The  purpose  of  the  Bible  is  not  to  create 
faith  in  man,  but  to  direct  man's  faith,  —  to  make 
man  see  whereon,  above  all  things,  he  must  pin  his 
faith  if  it  is  to  be  really  well  with  him  now  and  always. 
The  world  directs  man's  faith  to  the  man  himself  and 
to  this  visible  frame  of  men  and  things ;  the  Bible 
directs  man's  faith  to  God  through  Cin-ist.  This 
ought  we  to  do,  and  not  to  leave  the  other  undone. 
The  question  that  faces  us  to-day,  my  friends,  is  not 
between  faith  and  reason,  or  between  faith  and  sight, 
or  between  faith  and  proof,  or  between  faith  and 
actual  experience,  and  let  no  man  persuade  you  that 
it  can  be  treated  so  ;  it  is  a  question  between  faith 
in  the  temporal  and  faith  in  the  eternal,  —  between 
liiith  in  the  Spirit  and  in  the  Father  of  all  spirits 
and  faith  only  in.  this  visible  order  of  the  world.  It 
is  a  question  not  of  faith,  but  of  fact  and  of  recog- 
nizing the  fact,  —  not  ivhether  you  shall  believe,  but 


CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH.  121 

what  you  shall  believe,  whom  you  shall  believe  in. 
Like  the  distracted  father  of  the  maniac  boy,  we  all 
of  us  believe  ;  what  we  want  is  direction  for  our  be- 
lief, help  for  our  unbelief.  The  reason  that  most  of 
us  are  but  partial  and  half-hearted  in  our  religious 
faith  is  that  such  faith  seems  less  necessary  than  the 
other.  We  put  confidence  in  the  men  and  things  of 
this  world  because  we  have  got  to  if  we  mean  to  live 
in  this  world ;  but  the  next  world,  as  we  call  it,  seems 
far  away  ;  we  do  not  realize  it  as  a  practical  issue. 
Even  death,  which  happens  all  about  us  and  before 
our  eyes,  —  so  far  as  each  of  us  is  himself  concei'ned, 
though  we  know  death,  how  few  of  us  believe  it ! 
The  difficulties  of  faith  in  the  visible  present  do  not 
stagger  us  because  we  have  no  time  to  be  staggered 
by  them,  —  because  we  have  to  rush  right  through 
them  in  order  to  exist.  The  difficulties  are  meta- 
physical ;  but  the  wish  to  exist  is  physical.  We  can- 
not be  blind  to  the  temporal  things  in  this  world,  so 
we  cannot  avoid  faith  in  them ;  we  can  be  blind  to 
the  eternal  things  in  this  world,  and  so  we  find  it 
harder  to  exercise  our  faith  upon  them. 

Now,  a  great  many  Christians  fancy  that  the  best 
way  to  reinforce  their  faith  in  the  spiritual  life  is  to 
think  of  it  first  as  the  life  to  come,  and  then  to  insist 
that  the  life  to  come  is  more  important  than  the  life 
which  now  is  ;  in  other  words,  thafe  eternity  is  some- 
thing future.  That  is  a  profound  mistake.  Saint 
Paul  does,  indeed,  remark  that  the  things  seen  are 


122  CHRIST   MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH. 

temporal,  while  the  things  unseen  are  eternal ;  but 
he  is  far  from  saying  that  the  things  unseen  are 
only  future  things,  that  they  are  not  also  present 
things.  On  the  contrary,  again  and  again  he  urges 
tliat  the  things  unseen  are  just  as  present  as  the 
things  seen  ;  that  we  are  compassed  about  by  a 
great  cloud  of  witnesses ;  that  even  now  we  are  in 
the  spiritual  world ;  that  the  temporal  element  in 
things  and  persons  would  be  trivial  were  it  not  for 
the  eternal  element  that  is  also  in  them ;  and  that  it 
is  because  every  whit  of  time  is  in  touch  with  eter- 
nity that  "  Behold,  now  is  the  accepted  time,  now  is 
the  day  of  salvation."  "O  man  of  God,"  he  writes 
to  Timothy,  "  lay  hold  on  eternal  life,"  —  that  is,  do 
not  look  forward  to  it  merely ;  grasp  it  now. 

This,  then,  is  the  power  of  Christianity :  not  that 
it  inspires  men  to  sacrifice  the  known  present  to  an 
unknown  future,  but  that  it  gives  them  the  insight 
and  the  will  to  discern  eternity  in  time,  the  spirit  in 
the  flesh,  God  in  the  world.  Other  religions  had 
done  this  to  a  certain  extent  ;  but  Christianity  does 
it  in  a  new  and  peculiar,  in  an  absolute,  way.  As 
that  anxious  father  stood  before  Jesus  Christ,  and  in 
the  persuasive  influence  of  Christ's  presence  opened 
his  soul  to  Him,  the  father  exclaimed,  "  I  believe  ; 
help  Thou  mine  unbelief."  Let  me  try  briefly,  ere  I 
close,  to  show  how  Christ  answers  that  prayer  for 
all  of  us  that  offer  it  to  Him  out  of  a  humble  heart. 
He  deals  with  us  now  precisely  as  He  dealt  with 


CHRIST    MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH.         123 

that  man  in  my  text.  We  shall  go  over  some  of  the 
same  ground  that  we  reviewed  in  one  of  my  recent 
sermons ;  but  it  will  be  with  a  more  personal  appli- 
cation, even  as  this  interview  between  the  maniac 
boy's  father  and  Jesus  was  strictly  personal.  The 
outside  world  was  quite  forgotten  then. 

First,  by  His  mere  presence  and  character  Christ 
wakes  up  our  inner  perception  of  spiritual  things, 
our  faculties  of  spirit.  Christ  makes  each  of  us 
alive  to  our  personal  conscience.  All  along  con- 
science has  been  witnessing  in  every  man  to  things 
unseen,  insisting  on  the  religious  faith,  —  that  is, 
directing  faith  through  and  beyond  what  is  visible 
to  the  invisible  God.  But  this  visible  world  has 
been  continually  drowning  the  voice  of  conscience, 
continually  occupying  man's  faith  Avith  visible  things 
alone.  So  Christ  first  of  all  makes  space  for  con- 
science. To  come  in  contact  with  Christ  at  all,  to 
perceive  His  character,  to  listen  to  His  words,  is  to 
hear  our  own  conscience  speaking  out  whether  we 
will  or  no.  That  is  the  first  way  in  which  the 
Saviour  helps  us,  —  by  His  mere  presence  and  lan- 
guage and  demeanor  He  wakes  up  our  spiritual 
faculties.  But  Christ  does  more  than  this  ;  not  only 
does  He  quicken  the  eye  of  our  soul,  but  He  gives  it 
something  to  see,  —  He  presents  us  with  an  actual 
vision.  Our  trouble  has  been  that  while  temporal 
things  are  so  visible  that  we  cannot  help  directing 
our  faith  to  them,  the  eternal  things  were  invisible  ; 


124  CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH. 

they  did  not  force  themselves  on  us  as  temporal 
tilings  do.  Conscience  had  been  all  along  telling  ns 
of  the  perfect  Truth  and  the  perfect  Goodness ;  but 
we  did  not  anywhere  find  this  realized.  It  had 
come  to  us  as  an  inner  ideal  of  our  souls ;  but  we 
had  not  met  it  as  an  actual  fact  in  earthly  life,  vivid 
and  vital  in  this  world.  As  neither  you  nor  I  nor 
any  mere  man  that  ever  lived  had  been  able  to  be 
true  to  his  conscience,  —  to  live  up  to  and  achieve 
it,  —  what  was  there  to  show  positively,  objectively, 
out  there  in  the  tangible  world,  that  our  idea  of  God 
and  goodness  was  more  than  a  noble  dream  ?  What 
you  and  I  require  is  not  only  to  be  alive  to  the  dic- 
tates of  goodness  and  truth  within  us,  but  to  have 
this  God  of  ours  realized  outside  of  us.  If  we  could 
see  the  Perfect  Life  realized  on  earth,  then  we  could 
direct  our  faith  to  it  as  we  do  to  the  things  of  earth  ; 
then  eternity  and  spirit  and  God  Himself  would  be 
realized  to  us.  We  have  the  idea  of  eternity,  and 
when  we  think  of  it  we  always  find  eternity  to  be  iu 
the  last  resort  unthinkable  except  as  the  eternity  of 
God,  —  of  the  high  and  holy  One  which  iniiabiteth 
eternity.  But  what  we  want  is  to  see  this  holy  One 
also  inhabiting  time ;  for  it  is  not  tlie  faith  in  God 
that  is  so  difficult ;  it  is  the  realizing  God,  the  set- 
ting God  always  before  us  as  men  are  before  us,  the 
feeling  the  presence  of  God  outside  of  us,  and  vivid 
as  is  the  pressure  of  the  world. 

And  wiien  we  come  to  Jesus,  and  say  to  Him, 


CHRIST   MANIFESTED   HELPS   FAITH.  125 

"  Lord,  I  believe  ;  help  Thou  my  unbelief, '  our 
prayer  is  not  in  vain.  Part  of  our  Saviour's  errand 
is  just  this,  to  make  "  God  manifest  in  the  flesh.'' 
Oh,  how  that  word  of  one  of  the  first  apostles  rings 
joyfully  down  the  ages  !  —  "  That  which  was  from 
the  beginning,  which  we  have  heard,  which  we  have 
seen  with  our  eyes,  which  we  have  looked  upon  and 
our  hands  have  handled,  of  the  Word  of  Life  ;  (for 
the  life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it,  and 
bear  witness,  and  show  unto  you,  that  eternal  life 
which  was  with  the  Father,  and  was  manifested  unto 
us ;)  that  which  we  have  seen  and  heard  declare  we 
unto  you,  that  ye  also  may  have  fellowship  with  us : 
and  truly  our  fellowship  is  with  the  Father,  and  with 
His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  And  these  things  write  we 
unto  you,  that  your  joy  may  be  full. "  "  Pliilip  saith 
unto  Jesus,  Lord,  shew  us  the  Father,  and  it  suf- 
ficeth  us.  Jesus  saith  unto  him.  He  that  hath  seen 
Me,  hath  seen  the  Father. '  Age  after  age  a  voice 
within  man  had  been  urging  upon  him  that  truth 
and  goodness,  the  perfect  olmracter,  is  the  only  key 
to  knowledge,  the  only  basis  of  things ;  that  it  is  all 
that  makes  temporal  things  valuable,  all  that  shall 
not  vanish  when  these  heavens  shall  be  rolled  to- 
gether as  a  scroll,  and  when  their  host  shall  fall 
down  as  the  leaf  falleth  off  from  the  vine.  And  now 
once  for  all,  in  the  fulness  of  the  times,  in  the  actual 
life  of  Jesus  Christ  on  earth  we  see  what  we  know 
God  is,  —  we  meet  our  God.    In  Christ  God  finds  us. 


126  CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS  FAITH. 

confronts  us  as  the  world  confronts  us.  enables  us  to 
put  our  faith  in  Him  even  as  we  do  in  the  world  be- 
cause He  inhabiteth  this  world ;  and  so  Christ  directs 
our  fiiith  and  helps  our  unbelief.  If  you  shut  your 
eyes  to  Christ,  if  you  neglect  his  words,  if  you  de- 
cline to  follow  your  conscience's  instinctive  approval 
of  Him,  then  you  will  find  it  hard  and  iiarder  to 
believe  in  God,  because  nowhere  else  than  in  Christ 
is  God's  Being  made  so  visible  to  you. 

Time,  the  ruthless  destroyer,  weakens  the  influence 
and  damages  the  prestige  of  the  greatest  that  were 
mere  mankind.  The  world  outgrows  its  heroes. 
But  Jesus  Christ  the  Master  is  never  outgrown.  He 
stands  to-day,  as  ever,  "  holiest  among  the  mighty, 
mightiest  among  the  holy,  lifting  with  His  pierced 
hands  empires  off  their  hinges,  turning  the  stream  of 
centuries  into  a  better  channel,  and  still  governing 
the  ages."  ^  "  He,  lifted  up  from  the  earth,  draws  all 
men  unto  Him,"  because  He  makes  God  real  to 
them,  and  manifests  God's  love.  Long  before  God 
had  appeared  to  man  in  conscience  as  a  code  of 
Duty  ;  but  in  Christ  God  is  a  lovely  Life,  and  lovable 
as  Life,  Long  before  men's  reason  had  presupposed 
God  as  an  End,  an  Ideal,  and  a  Cause  ;  but  in  Christ 
God  is  beheld  as  a  Fact,  human,  historic,  imperative, 
to  be  reckoned  with  as  persons  on  this  earth  are  to 
be  reckoned  with.     He  still  makes  demands  on  our 

1  Quoted  from  an  unmeiitioned  author  in  Dr.  D.  H.  Greer's 
Bedell  Lecture,  p.  43. 


CHRIST  MANIFESTED   HELPS   FAITH.  127 

faith,  for  all  visible  and  historic  things  do  that.  But 
Christ  makes  even  less  demands  on  our  faith  than 
other  persons  do  for  the  reason  that,  by  the  common 
confession  of  all,  He  alone  is  perfectly  good,  corres- 
ponding entirely  to  our  presentiment  of  what  the 
great  God  must  be.  He  is  the  revelation  of  God  ; 
"  my  Lord  and  my  God  !  "  If  you  cherish  His  memory 
as  the  fact  of  history  in  your  mind  and  heart ;  if  you 
read  constantly  the  Gospel  story  of  Him  ;  if  you  let 
the  Church  by  prayer  and  sacrament  bring  close  to 
you  His  presence  and  His  power,  then  Christ  will 
make  God  more  objective  to  you,  more  real,  more 
necessary,  than  anything  else  in  this  world.  Come 
to  Christ  to-day.  Listen  to  Him  now.  Lay  your 
whole  being  open  to  Him.  And  then  see  if  you 
cannot  say  to  Him,  as  that  sick  boy's  father  said, 
"  Lord,  I  believe  ;  help  Thou  mine  unbelief." 


X. 

THE  MANIFESTATION   OF  LIFE.^ 

The  Life  was  manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it.  —  1  John 
1,12. 

The  earnest  expectation  of  the  creature  waiteth  for  the 
manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God.  —  Romans  viii.  19. 

"Ill  7E  pass  to-day  out  of  Epiphany  season  on 
towards  the  season  of  Lent.  Hereby  the 
life  of  Christ,  manifested  to  us,  is  seen  to  exact  a 
similar  manifestation  of  life  in  us ;  that  is  to  say, 
there  is  a  two-fold  manifestation  of  the  Christ-life : 
the  manifestation  of  Christ  to  man,  and  the  manifes- 
tation of  Christ  in  man.  The  life  of  Christ  exhibited 
to  us  exacts  a  similar  exhibition  of  life  in  us,  by  us. 
Let  us  try  before  this  season  passes  to  grasp  the  two- 
fold lesson. 

One  of  the  first  things  which  every  true  student 
learns,  one  of  the  most  necessary  steps  to  real  wisdom 
is  this :  that  the  truth  of  things,  which  is,  on  the  one 
side,  a  discovery  by  man,  is  also,  on  the  other  side,  a 
manifestation  to  man.  The  student  discovers  the 
truth,  but  he  does  not  make  it ;  the  truth  was  there 
beforehand.  The  truth  is  independent  of  you  and 
me  and  every  man ;  but  it  rests  with  us  to  look  for 

^  Septuagesima  sermon. 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF  LIFE.  129 

the  truth  and  to  see  it  whenever  it  is  shown.  There 
are  men  who,  having  eyes,  see  not ;  who,  having  ears, 
hear  not.  Their  blindness  and  deafness  does  not 
annihilate  the  truth,  nor  alter  it  one  whit.  The  truth 
is  there  all  the  same  ;  it  is  being  manifested  all  the 
same,  if  not  to  these  men,  then  to  others.  He  that 
hath  eyes,  let  him  see  ;  he  that  hath  ears,  let  him 
hear. 

This  is  self-evident,  when  once  we  state  it ;  yet 
there  is  nothing  that  we  more  easily  forget.  The 
conceited  scholar  is  one  of  the  commonest  objects  in 
cultivated  society  ;  and  what  is  he  ?  Simply  the  man 
who  is  so  puffed  up  by  the  consciousness  that  he  has 
discovered  some  item  of  the  truth  that  he  quite  for- 
gets that  he  could  never  have  discovered  it  unless  it 
had  been  first  manifested  to  him.  He  goes  about 
bragging  as  if  he  had  made  the  truth,  whereas  all 
that  he  did  was  to  open  his  eyes  to  it. 

Now  in  the  two  passages  of  my  text,  this  all- 
important  aspect  of  truth  as  a  manifestation  is  em- 
phasized. Saint  John  in  his  first  Epistle  speaks  of 
Jesus  Christ  as  the  manifestation  of  God's  life,  which 
was  from  the  beginning.  The  soul  of  man  wants  to 
know  God,  to  see  God  :  Look  at  Jesus,  Saint  John 
says ;  in  Him  God  is  unveiled.  In  Ciu'ist  mankind 
can  see  the  character  of  God.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  Saint  Paul  declares  that  in 
the  earthly  life  of  true  Christians  there  is  an  unveiling 
of  the  sons  of  God ;  and  he  hints  mysteriously  that 

9 


130  THE   MANIFESTATION   OF  LIFE. 

the  whole  wide  world  of  created  being  is  looking  on 
eagerly  as  this  disclosure  progresses  ;  that  "  the  earn- 
est expectation  of  the  creature  waiteth  for  the  mani- 
festation of  the  sons  of  God."  Have  we  not  here,  my 
brothers,  a  theme  worthy  of  our  thought  ?  It  is  the 
ambition  of  every  noble  man  and  woman  to  know 
the  truth  and  to  be  true  :  only  in  the  light  of  Christ 
as  manifested  can  we  ever  know  the  truth ;  only  by 
the  life  of  Christ  imitated  in  ourselves  can  we  be 
true.  Nor  in  this  great  effort  do  we  struggle  on 
unnoticed.  To  the  tired  runner  for  a  prize  it  is  a 
distinct  stinmlus  and  encouragement  when  he  feels 
the  thousand  eyes  of  the  spectators  watching  his 
course ;  and  Saint  Paul  hints  that  the  men  who  in 
every  age  are  striving  to  imitate  Jesus  Christ  are  ob- 
served by  the  whole  created  universe  of  being,  waiting 
to  see  what  this  wonderful  manifestation  of  human 
soul-life  will  be,  —  these  faithful  sons  of  God.  Let  us 
try  then  briefly  this  morning  to  enter  into  this  great, 
inspiring  theme,  suggested  by  our  text. 

All  human  life  is  an  unveiling  of  things  hidden  ; 
history  is  the  record  of  this  gradual  disclosure.  It  is 
so  in  knowledge.  The  geometer  does  not  invent  his 
fascinating  theorems  ;  by  painful  thinking  he  merely 
helps  us  to  perceive  the  relations  of  things  in  space 
which  would  be  self-evident,  evident  at  once,  to 
minds  more  powerful.  The  astronomer's  telescope 
does  not  make  the  star-dust ;  it  makes  it  manifest  to 
men.     The  moralist  does  not  create  conscience  ;  he 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE.  131 

only  discloses  more  accurately  the  contents  of  con- 
science, and  registers  its  voice. 

It  is  the  same  in  sociology  and  politics.  History 
is  the  disclosure  of  mankind  to  man.  The  history  of 
a  nation  in  State  and  Church  is  the  record  of  the 
weaving  into  one  connected  fabric  of  the  principles, 
characters,  talents,  passions,  that  worked  themselves 
out  from  epoch  to  epoch.  The  Greek,  the  Roman, 
the  Englishman,  and  the  American  have  been  dis- 
tinctly manifested  in  their  institutions  and  arts  and 
annals. 

It  is  the  same  in  the  life  of  individuals.  "  What 
man,"  saith  the  Scripture,  "  knoweth  the  things  of  a 
man,  save  the  spirit  of  man  which  is  in  him  ? " 
That  is  true  to  begin  with  ;  but  when  the  man  has 
lived  his  life  right  out  he  puts  himself  on  record,  he 
sliows  himself  up.  By  his  deeds  he  is  justified  ; 
by  his  deeds  he  is  condemned ;  angels  and  men 
take  the  measure  of  him.  Be  the  man  never  so 
desirous  to  pass  for  something  else,  in  the  very 
effort  to  do  so  he  is  but  exhibiting  the  more  effec- 
tually what  he  really  is.  This  constitutes  the  inter- 
est of  biography  ;  it  is  the  manifestation,  conscious 
or  unconscious,  of  a  man.  The  tongue  of  judgment 
may  be  tied  for  the  present ;  but  it  has  patent 
grounds  for  a  decision,  and  will  utter  its  decision  by 
and  by.  A  man's  character  is  not  always  brought 
home  to  him  ;  but  it  is  disclosed  to  others.  His 
brain-power,  his  will-power,  his  affections,  his  con- 


132  THE   MANIFESTATION   OF  LIFE. 

scientiousness  or  unconscientiousness,  are  registered 
before  he  dies.  The  life  reveals  the  man.  Tlie 
judgment  of  him  may  be  mute,  but  it  is  real. 

Yet  human  life  and  history  are  not  only  an  apoca- 
lypse of  man  to  man,  but  also  of  God  to  man.  In 
individual  life,  in  social  life,  in  the  life  of  nations 
and  of  races,  there  is  a  slow  but  steady  manifesta- 
tion of  Deity.  "Whom,  therefore,  ye  ignorantly 
worship,  Him  declare  T  unto  you,"  is  the  motto  of 
human  history.  History  proves  God,  and  then  re- 
veals Him.  It  first  proves  God ;  for  it  shows  that 
the  idea  of  God  is  fastened  to  man,  —  so  wrapped 
up  in  the  very  being  of  man  and  in  the  annals  of 
mankind,  that,  if  man  is  a  reality,  God  must  be. 
History  shows  that  God  is  not  simply  an  indispen- 
sable item  or  factor  in  man's  thinking,  but  that  He  is 
also  indispensable  in  man's  living ;  for  man  has  never 
been  able  to  live  without  God,  —  without  recogniz- 
ing God.  Go  wliere  you  will  in  the  records,  in  the 
most  ancient  times  or  in  the  most  modern  times, 
wherever  a  nation  has  forgotten  God,  or  tried  for 
long  to  do  without  Him,  that  nation  has  been 
doomed  ;  swiftly  or  slowly,  but  surely  always,  it  has 
gone  down,  down,  dwindling  to  decay.  A  godless 
nation  has  been  and  is  a  doomed  nation.  If  man  is 
to  be,  God  must  be.  This  is  not  now  a  matter  of 
mere  theory  or  conjecture ;  it  is  the  manifestation 
of  history. 

But   so   far   the    manifestation  was   not   definite 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE.  133 

enough,  not  close  enough,  not  winning  enough, 
for  man.  History  had  proved  God,  but  it  had 
not  yet  revealed  him.  God  is ;  the  world,  the 
individual  soul,  cannot  be  without  God,  —  can- 
not either  do  without  Him  or  think  without  Him. 
But  what  sort  of  a  God  is  He,  • —  a  God  to  fear,  or 
a  God  to  love  ;  a  God  to  believe  in  and  tremble, 
as  the  devils  do,  or  a  God  to  adore  and  love 
and  serve  as  children  with  a  Father,  as  the  sons  of 
God  ?  So,  then,  God,  who  in  man's  general  history 
and  personal  life  was  hitherto  making  Himself  known 
by  many  portions  and  in  many  manners,  hath  in 
these  last  days  spoken  to  us  by  His  Son.  As  the 
Saviour  Himself  expressed  it  in  His  great  high- 
priestly  prayer,  the  seventeenth  chapter  of  Saint 
John's  Gospel,  "  I  have  glorified  Thee  on  the  earth ; 
...  I  have  manifested  Thy  Name  [that  is,  Thy 
real  Being  and  Nature]  unto  the  men  which  Thou 
gavest  Me."  To  know  God  Himself,  —  not  merely 
what  men  have  found  out  about  Him,  or  felt 
about  Him,  or  thought  about  Him,  or  realized 
in  separation  from  Him,  but  to  know  Him,  to 
see  His  will,  His  thought,  His  purpose,  expressed, 
realized,  achieved,  made  visible  and  tangible  in 
an  actual  human  Person,  living  as  we  live,  human 
as  we  are  human,  only  better,  perfect  and  com- 
plete, —  this  was  the  want  of  the  human  soul ;  and 
this  want  was  satisfied  in  the  Incarnation  of  Our 
Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ,  in  whom  dwelt  all 


134  THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE. 

the  fulness  of  the  Godhead  bodily.  Christ  disclosed 
both  God's  will  for  man  and  God's  will  in  man. 
"  Philip  saith  unto  Him,  Lord,  shew  us  the  Father, 
and  it  sufficeth  us,  Jesus  saith  unto  him,  Have  I 
been  so  long  time  with  you,  and  yet  hast  thou  not 
known  Me,  Philip?  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath 
seen  the  Father.  Believest  thou  not  that  I  am  in 
the  Father  and  the  Father  in  Me  ?  The  words  that 
I  speak  unto  you  I  speak  not  of  Myself;  but  the 
Father  that  dwelleth  in  Me,  He  doeth  the  works." 
When  you  and  I,  my  brothers,  open  our  New  Testa- 
ment to-day,  and  read  what  Christ  said,  and  see 
what  Christ  was,  what  Christ  is,  we  have  at  last  the 
mind  of  Christ,  which  is  the  manifestation,  the  rev- 
elation, of  the  Almighty  Father  of  us  all.  It  is  an 
awful  thought,  and  yet  it  may  be  to  any  of  us  a 
njost  consoling  and  inspiring  thouglit,  that  when 
with  our  fingers  we  turn  the  pages  of  the  Gospels, 
our  minds,  our  hearts,  our  wills,  are  in  very  contact 
with  the  Will,  the  Mind,  the  Heart,  of  Him  who 
made  us,  in  whom  we  live,  and  move,  and  have  our 
being.  Just  as  when  you  and  I  speak  face  to  face, 
it  is  mind  speaking  to  mind,  soul  addressing  soul, 
personality  touching  personality,  so  in  and  through  the 
utterances  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Mind  and  Heart  of 
our  Heavenly  Father  are  opened  to  us.  The  Life  is 
manifested,  and  we  have  seen  it ;  that  is  the  miracle 
of  the  New  Testament,  —  that  in  either  one  of  those 
four   Gospels,    no   longer,  the  whole   of  it,  than   a 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE.  135 

single  chapter  of  an  ordinary  modern  biography, 
there  stands  out  to  our  vision,  marvellous  but  clear, 
the  very  character  of  God,  of  God  made  man.  It  is 
a  foretaste  of  the  Beatific  Vision.  In  strict  Scrip- 
ture phrase,  the  character  of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  image 
of  God.  "  God,  who  commanded  the  light  to  shine 
out  of  darkness,  hath  shined  in  our  hearts,  to  give 
the  light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God  in 
the  Face  of  Jesus  Christ ;  "  and  the  note  of  all  notes, 
the  characteristic  of  all  characteristics,  enveloping,  en- 
lightening all  the  others,  interpreting,  complementing, 
mellowing,  and  softening  them,  is  the  note  of  love. 
In  Christ  we  are  assured  that  God  is  Love,  —  "  God 
so  loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only-begotten 
Son." 

Yet  so  far  we  have  but  one  half  of  our  text,  but 
one  half  of  the  manifestation.  The  earnest  expecta- 
tion of  the  creature  had  waited  for  the  manifestation 
of  God,  but  it  waiteth  also  for  the  manifestation  of 
the  sons  of  God.  For  man  is  God's  child,  and  to 
exhibit  what  God  is,  is  to  exhibit  what  men,  God's 
children,  ought  to  be.  Christ  is  not  only  the  revela- 
tion of  God,  He  is  also  the  pattern  of  man.  "  That 
the  love  wherewith  Thou  hast  loved  Me  may  be  in 
them,  and  I  in  them,"  is  His  prayer  for  His  disciples. 
Christ  is  not  alone  the  truth  for  the  human  reason  ; 
He  is  the  truth  for  the  human  will  ;  He  is  our  Life, 
our  Way.  And  in  the  second  passage  of  our  text, 
Saint  Paul  implies  that  this  disclosure  of  what  Chris- 


136  THE  MANIFESTATION  OF   LIFE. 

tiaiis  can  do  and  be  in  the  way  of  the  imitation  of 
Christ,  in  the  way  of  actually  achieving  in  their  own 
several  individualities  the  character  of  sons  of  God  — 
Saint  Paul  implies  that  this  disclosure  is  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  the  whole  created  universe.  We  are  a 
spectacle  to  angels  and  to  men.  It  is  as  if  we  should 
witness  some  great  and  gifted  artist  instructing  a 
class  of  pupils,  and  then  should  watch  earnestly  to 
see  in  the  pupils  the  fruits  of  the  master's  teaching,  — 
to  see  how  far  and  in  what  manifold  developments 
his  principles  and  methods,  his  nameless  power  and 
secret,  should  be  reproduced  in  his  disciples.  It  is 
as  if,  of  a  summer  morning,  we  should  stand  on  some 
mountain-top  at  dawn,  and  as  the  sun  rose  strong 
and  glorious  in  the  sky,  should  look  about  us  to 
observe  how  the  various  objects  of  the  earth,  each 
according  to  its  constitution  and  individuality,  should 
reflect  his  radiance ;  what  the  tones  and  tints  of  local 
color  would  be,  as  the  one  pure  white  light  of  the 
central  luminary  was  scattered  and  absorbed  in  the 
myriad  different  bodies  of  the  world.  In  some  such 
way,  yet  more  spiritual,  more  mystical,  there  is  an 
earnest  expectation  of  the  creature  waiting  for  the 
manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God.  The  history  of 
Christianity  is  the  record  of  various  specimens  of 
achieved  Christian  sonship.  With  all  its  lights  and 
shadows,  its  imperfections,  its  unfaithfulnesses  and 
inadequacies,  its  travesties  and  caricatures  and  per- 
versions of  the  one  only  perfect  Model,  there  is  such 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE.  137 

a  thing  as  the  history  of  the  saints,  which  he  who 
runs  may  read.  No  age  has  been  without  them,  no 
climate,  no  conditions  too  hard  for  them.  In  the 
most  unexpected  places,  in  the  most  unforeseen  cos- 
tumes, these  saints,  these  sons  of  God  appear :  in  the 
poor  man's  rags,  but  also  in  the  rich  man's  splendor  ; 
in  the  silence  of  the  desert,  but  also  in  the  rush  and 
din  of  the  market-place ;  among  men  unlearned  and 
ignorant,  but  also  where  human  letters  and  human 
thinking  have  stretched  to  their  utmost  capacity  of 
tension  the  most  versatile  intellects ;  at  the  centre  of 
European  civilization,  and  also  far  away  where  iron 
traditions  and  antiquated  standards  hold  fast  in 
fetters  the  singular  Chinese.  Sainthood  has  proved 
itself  to  be  universally  possible,  because  all  mankind 
are  children  of  the  one  Father  which  is  in  Heaven, 
and  brothers  all  of  Him  in  whom,  as  the  Son  of 
Mary,  was  manifested  the  ideal  Man.  In  the  Fathers 
house  are  many  mansions,  —  a  place  for  every  type. 
Christianity  is  a  character,  not  a  system  of  local  rules. 
The  thing  for  vigorous  and  real  disciples  of  Jesus  to 
do  is,  not  to  try  to  copy  certain  specific  gestures  and 
temporary  incidents  of  the  earthly  life  of  their  Master, 
as  He  lived  it  long  ago,  a  carpenter  in  Palestine,  but 
to  rise  up  to  an  appreciation  of  the  mind  of  Christ, 
the  central,  universal  principle  and  motive,  applicable 
to  all  men  and  to  every  age.  That  is  what  shines 
out  unmistakable  in  the  Gospel  story.  It  requires 
some  study   of  antiquities  to   make   vivid  to  one's 


138  THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE. 

imagination  the  scenery  and  setting  and  the  local 
color  of  the  life  of  Jesus,  the  Nazarene.  But  in 
order  to  grasp  Christ's  mind,  there  is  no  need  of 
dabbling  in  antiquities.  Better  to  read  the  Gospels 
attentively  on  one's  knees.  This  should  we  do  by 
all  means,  if  haply  it  be  also  wise  not  to  leave  the 
other  undone. 

My  brothers,  I  think  that  few  of  us  can  have  failed 
to  feel,  some  time  or  other,  the  silent,  subtle  pressure 
of  the  world  without  us,  waiting  for  the  manifestation 
in  us  of  the  Christian  character.  At  certain  moments, 
welcome  or  unwelcome,  it  has  seemed  as  if  a  thousand 
eyes  were  resting  on  us  and  watching.  We  are  sealed 
with  the  sign  of  the  cross  on  our  foreheads,  and  all 
around  us  there  is  an  expectation  of  some  sign  of  it 
in  our  hearts.  Ignorant  souls,  who  have  heard 
Christ's  name,  but  no  more,  are  looking  to  learn  of 
Him  from  us  who  know  Him ;  wavering  souls,  who 
would  fain  be  true  to  Him,  watch  to  see  whether  we 
are  true  ;  yes,  and  the  dear,  dead  faces  of  those  who 
first  brought  us  to  Jesus,  these  from  behind  the  veil 
still  follow  us  with  faithful  eyes.  "  Wherefore,  seeing 
we  are  compassed  about  with  so  great  a  cloud  of 
witnesses,  let  us  lay  aside  every  weight,  and  the  sin 
which  doth  so  easily  beset  us,  and  let  us  run  with 
patience  the  race  that  is  set  before  us,  looking  unto 
Jesus."  When  Nelson  wished  to  inspire  his  sailors 
with  bravery  at  the  battle  of  Trafalgar,  his  message 
was,  "England  expects  every  man  to  do  his  duty." 


THE   MANIFESTATION   OF   LIFE.  139 

And  when  our  spirits  flag  and  fiilter  in  the  more 
serious  battle  of  the  soul, —  if  the  stress  and  strain  of 
this  workaday  world  begin  to  tell  on  us,  and  the 
original  impulse  to  righteousness  begins  to  fail  in  us  ; 
if  ever  our  prayers  grow  few  and  far  between,  ai^d 
the  thought  of  God  aud  Heaven  loses  its  attractive- 
ness, its  strange  compelling  power,  —  then  this  mes- 
sage of  Saint  Paul  may  constrain  us  to  new  effort : 
"  the  earnest  expectation  of  tlie  creature  waiteth  for 
the  manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God." 


XI. 

LEANNESS   OF   SOUL.^ 

He  gave  them  their  desire  :  and  sent  leanness  withal  into 
their  soul.  —  Psalm  cvi.  15  (P.  B.  version). 

THE  Gospel  of  to-day  calls  our  attention  to  the 
unfruitfulness  of  most  men's  lives.  The  sower 
sows  good  seed  in  the  field,  but  the  yield  is  for  the 
most  part  disappointing  ;  and  our  text  from  the  one 
hundred  and  sixth  psalm  gives  a  different  but  equally 
vivid  expression  to  the  same  idea.  This  psalm  and 
that  which  precedes  it  are  among  the  latest  in  the 
Psalter  ;  they  belong  together,  and  were  composed 
far  on  in  the  history  of  the  Jews,  after  the  return  of 
Judah  and  Benjamin  from  captivity  in  Babylon. 
Probably  these  two  psalms  were  written  by  the 
prophet  Haggai  to  be  sung  at  the  dedication  of  the 
second  temple  by  Zerrubbabel.  This  origin  would 
account  for  the  serious,  didactic  tone  which  pervades 
them.  They  begin  and  end,  indeed,  with  joyful  ex- 
pressions of  praise  to  God,  the  King  and  strong  De- 
liverer of  Israel  through  all  the  eventful  centuries 
which  they  commemorate  ;  but  interspersed  between 

^  Sexagesima  sermon. 


LEANNESS   OF    SOUL.  141 

these  accents  of  gratitude  there  are  loug  passages  of 
self-rebuke  for  unused  opportunities,  —  of  repentance 
for  Israel's  failures  and  shame  and  sin.  Very  different 
had  been  the  psalm  that  David  composed  for  Asaph  to 
sing  at  that  earlier  service  of  dedication  when  the  ark 
of  God  was  first  brought  up  from  the  house  of  Obed- 
Edom,  the  Gittite,  into  Jerusalem,  the  new  capital  of 
the  kingdom.  That  psalm,  as  given  to  us  in  the  six- 
teenth chapter  of  the  first  book  of  the  Chronicles,  is 
the  hymn  of  a  young  man  and  a  young  nation,  bright 
in  their  anticipations,  and  conscious  of  their  strength. 
The  note  of  self-reproach,  the  sober  scanning  of  a 
bungled  past,  is  quite  left  out.  But  in  this  hymu 
from  which  my  text  comes  the  sadder  note  prevails. 
The  joy  is  real  still ;  but  it  is  the  maturer  joy  of  the 
soul  and  of  the  nation  that  has  lived  long  enough  to 
measure  not  only  the  goodness  and  power  of  the 
God  that  guides  it,  but  also  its  own  weakness  and 
perversity. 

There  is  something  very  noble  and  touching  in  the 
use  which  the  Jews  made  of  this  psalm ;  for  they  did 
not  sing  it  on  that  one  occasion  alone  of  the  dedica- 
tion of  their  second  temple ;  it  was  incorporated  into 
the  psalter  which  was  chanted  regularly  month  by 
month  in  the  services  of  their  synagogues.  Again  and 
again  and  again  did  they  make  for  themselves  occa- 
sions to  recall  the  chequered  story  of  their  national  ca- 
reer, and  thereby  to  mingle  with  their  moments  of  just 
rejoicing  more  frequent  memories  of  painful  punish- 


142  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

ment  and  of  hopes  unharvested.  "  Praise  ye  the 
Lord,"  our  psahn  begins.  "  Oh,  give  thanks  unto 
the  Lord,  for  He  is  gracious,  and  His  mercy  eu- 
dureth  forever.  Who  can  express  the  noble  acts  of 
the  Lord,  or  shew  forth  all  His  praise  ?  Blessed  are 
they  that  alway  keep  judgment  and  do  righteous- 
ness. Remember  me,  O  Lord,  according  to  the 
favour  that  Thou  bearest  unto  Thy  people  ;  O  visit 
me  with  Thy  salvation ;  that  I  may  see  the  felicity 
of  Thy  chosen,  and  rejoice  in  the  gladness  of  Thy 
people  :  O  visit  me  with  Thy  salvation."  But  here 
the  note  of  sadness  strikes  in  :  "■  We  have  sinned 
loith  our  fathers  ;  we  have  done  amiss  and  dealt 
wickedly.  Our  fathers  regarded  not  Thy  wonders  in 
Egypt,  neither  kept  they  Thy  great  goodness  in  re- 
membrance ;  but  were  disobedient  at  the  sea,  even 
at  the  Red  Sea.  Nevertheless  He  helped  them  for 
His  Name's  sake,  that  He  might  make  His  power  to 
be  known.  He  rebuked  the  Red  Sea  also,  and  it 
was  dried  up  ;  so  He  led  them  through  the  deep,  as 
through  a  wilderness.  And  He  saved  them  from  the 
adversary's  hand,  and  delivered  them  from  the  hand 
of  the  enemy.  .  .  .  Then  believed  they  His  words, 
and  sang  praise  unto  Him.  But  within  a  while 
they  forgat  His  works,  and  would  not  abide  His 
counsel.  But  lust  came  upon  them  in  the  wilder- 
ness, and  they  tempted  God  in  the  desert.  And  He 
gave  them  their  desire :  and  sent  leanness  withal 
into  their  soul." 


LEANNESS  OF   SOUL.  143 

1.  How  truly  those  brief  words  picture  the  whole 
history  of  the  Jewish  people !  In  the  want  and 
thraldom  of  Egypt  they  had  longed  for  the  land  that 
was  very  far  off,  —  the  land  of  freedom  and  plenty 
and  peace.  So  God  brought  them  to  that  promised 
land ;  but  when  they  got  there,  instead  of  continu- 
ing to  serve  and  worship  the  God  that  gave  it 
them,  they  bowed  down  their  souls  to  the  empty 
idols  of  the  people  that  were  there  before  them. 
Thus,  though  the  land  was  flowing  with  milk  and 
honey,  it  brought  but  leanness  into  their  soul. 

By  and  by  they  set  their  hearts  on  having  a  visible, 
earthly  king ;  and  God  gave  them  their  desire.  But 
their  kings  were  faithless  to  their  God  ;  they  labored 
for  selfish  and  unrighteous  ends ;  they  split  the  king- 
dom in  twain,  and  raised  rival  altars  to  the  Most 
High,  until  Isaiah  the  prophet,  describing  the  con- 
dition of  his  people,  exclaimed  thus  :  "  The  haughty 
people  of  the  earth  do  languish,  because  they  have 
transgressed  the  laws,  changed  the  ordinance,  broken 
the  everlasting  covenant.  Therefore  hath  the  curse 
devoured  the  earth,  and  they  that  dwell  therein  are 
desolate.  The  city  of  confusion  is  broken  down  : 
every  house  is  shut  up,  that  no  man  may  come  in. 
...  I  said.  My  leanness,  my  leanness,  woe  unto 
me!" 

Not  to  linger  longer  on  the  illustrations  of  our 
text  which  occurred  shortly  after  this  psalm  was 
written,  let  us  pass  at  once  to  the  advent  of  the 


144  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

Messiah.  For  centuries  upon  centuries  the  Jews 
had  looked  forward  to  Christ.  Beginning  in  dark- 
lino-  surmises  of  what  He  should  be  and  do  for 
them  ;  little  by  little  their  vision  of  Him  enlarged, 
each  prophet  supplying  now  one  aspect  and  now 
another  of  the  whole  rounded  character  that  was 
to  be.  At  last  the  Christ  came ;  God  gave  the 
Jews  their  desire.  But  so  little  did  they  know 
their  own  needs,  so  little  did  they  understand  "  the 
thought  beyond  their  thought,"  so  lean  were  they  of 
soul,  that  when  the  Messiah  Himself  "  beheld  their 
city  He  wept  over  it,  saying,  If  thou  hadst  known, 
even  thou,  at  least  in  this  thy  day,  the  things  which 
belong  unto  thy  peace !  But  now  they  are  hid  from 
thine  eyes." 

2.  This  actual  history  is  also  a  parable  ;  it  was  as 
a  parable  that  the  Jews  used  it  in  their  services  of 
prayer  and  praise.  "  The  thing  that  hath  been,  it  is 
that  Which  shall  be  ;  and  that  which  is  done  is  that 
which  shall  be  done."  As  you  and  I  read  that  psalm 
of  Haggai  in  our  devotions  to-day,  we  are  not  telling 
a  story  alien  to  ourselves ;  we  are  making  a  confes- 
sion of  ourselves.  "  He  gave  them  their  desire  :  and 
sent  leanness  withal  into  their  soul."  Cynics  speak 
often  of  human  life  as  a  spectacle  of  unsatisfied  de- 
sire ;  it  is  quite  as  often  a  spectacle  of  desire  satis- 
fied, but  yet  unfruitful. 

What  are  the  five  main  nobler  desires  of  mankind  ? 
the  desires  that  men  can  cherish  in  regard  to  this 


LEANNESS   OF   SOUL.  145 

earthly  life  with  some  prospect  that  God  will, grant 
them  ?  They  are  Knowledge,  Wealth,  Social  Pres- 
tige, Political  Power,  Family  Happiness.  Around 
these  five  pivots,  towards  one  or  more  of  these  five 
points,  the  lawful  earthly  desires  of  most  men  are 
turned.  And  everywhere  about  us  we  witness  the 
granting  of  these  desires. 

Some  men,  and  they  originally  are  among  the 
noblest,  wish  above  all  things  to  exercise  their  minds, 
to  fill  them  full,  to  master  all  there  is  to  know  of 
this  strange,  inexplicable  world.  To  them  books  and 
monuments  and  the  arts,  men  and  their  manners,  in- 
sects and  animals,  rocks  and  trees  and  stars,  and  all 
the  elements  of  the  physical  universe,  are  so  many 
symbols  of  a  rational  system  ;  and  into  this  system 
these  men  are  minded  to  penetrate.  Of  such,  the 
late  Professor  Pattison,  of  Oxford,  furnishes  a  notable 
specimen,  —  a  specimen  of  which  the  author  of 
"  Robert  Elsmere  "  availed  herself  for  her  character 
of  the  Oxford  tutor  in  that  well-known  novel.  What 
is  the  matter  with  this  man  ?  Learning  was  the  set 
object  of  this  man's  desire,  and  he  is  learned.  His 
mind  is  well-furnished,  his  tastes  are  cultivated  and 
sincere.  His  very  heart's  desire  has  been  given  to 
him.  But  his  soul  has  had  leanness  sent  into  it. 
His  very  learning  seems  to  have  emasculated  him  ; 
he  is  but  a  shadow  of  a  man.  What  is  the  matter 
with  him  ? 

Other  men,  the  great  majority,  seek  W^ealth.     Do 

10 


146  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

not  numbers  of  them  get  it  ?  Is  there  not  an  abun- 
dance of  rich  men  all  about  us  ?  The  idea  of  it  is 
entirely  lawful,  —  it  might  be  even  noble  ;  so  God 
realizes  it  constantly.  He  lets  men  try  their  hand  at 
riches.  The  genius  of  money-making  is  as  distinctly 
conferred  by  God  upon  some  men  as  are  the  artistic 
talent,  the  social  talent,  the  political  talent,  upon 
other  men.  But  what  a  botch  most  men  make  of  it ! 
How  futile  their  wealth  is !  how  little  that  is  real 
comes  of  it !  How  they  impress  us  as  one  who  wears 
a  garment  that  must  soon  be  put  off.  How  instinct- 
ively every  unspoiled  conscience  applies  to  them  the 
stinging  words  of  the  Apocalypse  to  the  angel  of  the 
Church  of  the  Laodiceans  :  "  I  know  thy  works.  .  .  . 
Because  thou  sayest,  I  am  rich,  and  increased  with 
goods,  and  have  need  of  nothing ;  and  knoAvest  not 
that  thou  art  wretclied,  and  miserable,  and  poor,  and 
blind,  and  naked  :  I  counsel  thee  to  buy  of  me  gold 
tried  in  tlie  fire,  that  thou  mayest  be  rich ;  and 
anoint  thine  eyes  with  eyesalve,  that  thou  mayest 
see."  And  of  such  men  also  we  inquire,  What  is  the 
matter  with  tliem  ?     What  makes  them  lean  ? 

Another  of  our  lawful  earthly  desires  is  that  for 
Social  Prestige ;  to  shine  in  the  world  and  lead  the 
world ;  to  be  the  observed  of  all  observers,  and  to 
set  the  pace  that  others  follow ;  to  hold  the  many 
mingled  threads  of  society's  efforts  and  likings  and 
fashions  in  one's  own  hand,  and  to  wield  them  accord- 
ing to  one's  own  will ;  so  to  put  upon  the  forms  of 


LEANNESS   OF   SOUL.  147 

our  contemporaries  the  impress  of  our  own  person- 
ality that  our  contemporaries  vahie  in  themselves 
that  which  they  reflect  from  us,  —  this  in  every  age 
is  the  heart's  desire  of  many  a  strong  man  and  gifted 
woman.  And  again  and  again  their  desire  is  granted 
them.  But  when  they  have,  as  they  think,  succeeded, 
how  disappointing  the  result  too  often  is  !  how  mel- 
ancholy the  outcome  of  so  vast  an  enterprise  !  You 
hear  of  these  social  leaders  from  afar.  You  know 
that  their  power  is  actual.  You  feel  in  your  own 
self,  in  your  own  manners  and  endeavors,  their  subtle, 
pervasive  influence.  You  desire,  therefore,  to  know 
them  personally  ;  and  you  expect  great  things,  not 
merely  of  them,  but  in  them.  They  stand  for  so 
much  in  the  world's  arena  that  you  fancy  naturally 
that  they  themselves  must  be  as  exceptional  as  their 
position  is.  But  how  often,  when  you  have  come 
actually  into  their  presence,  you  are  disenchanted  : 
your  expectations  are  dashed.  There  is  a  singular 
blight  upon  them.  The  fig-tree  is  there  with  its  brave 
show  of  leaves  ;  but  there  is  no  ripe  fruit  behind  the 
leaves.  These  persons  are  really  leaders  of  society  ; 
there  is  no  denying  that ;  but  their  very  leadership 
has  spoiled  them.  There  is  no  solidity  of  noble 
character  to  substantiate  the  nobility  of  their  position. 
God  has  given  them  their  desire ;  but  alas !  their 
souls  are  lean.     What  is  the  matter  with  them  ? 

So  likewise  with  Political  Achievement.     There  is 
much  of  luck  in  this,  but  originally  there  is  almost 


148  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

always  much  of  genuine  power,  mucli  that  is  valuable. 
It  is  an  aim  worthy  of  any  man  to  represent  the 
people ;  to  realize  their  unspoken  wishes ;  to  satisfy 
their  growing  needs  ;  to  frame  new  laws  for  them  to 
meet  new  exigencies  ;  to  relieve  their  inward  diffi- 
culties and  guard  them  from  outward  dangers ;  in 
short,  to  reveal  the  people  to  themselves,  and  then 
to  lead  and  lift  them  onward  to  larger  issues  and  to 
higher  aims,  —  this,  I  say,  is  an  ideal  worthy  of  the 
nation's  best  men.  We  require  such  "  public  souls," 
as  Plato  called  them.  But  who  of  us  has  not  been 
saddened  and  mortified  to  witness  in  many  a  leader, 
both  of  Church  and  State,  a  certain  indescribable  but 
immistakable  lowering  of  tone,  so  soon  as  the  position 
of  leadership  had  been  reached  ?  The  people  them- 
selves, mute  but  keen,  notice  this  change  in  their 
representatives,  and  thereby  is  lost  to  them  that 
inimitable  charm  of  moral  suasion  and  of  personal 
respect,  which  is  the  fine  flower  of  true  statesmanship. 
From  that  moment  the  people  ase  their  leaders  ;  avail 
themselves  of  them  for  lack  of  better  ;  but  they  are 
no  longer  swayed  by  their  leaders  in  spite  of  them- 
selves. The  leaders  are  poor  puppets,  soon  dropped 
or  pushed  aside,  and  for  this  reason :  that  though 
they  achieved  their  desire,  leanness  withal  has  entered 
into  their  soul.     What  is  the  matter  with  them  ? 

So  too  with  Family  Happiness.  This,  I  suppose, 
is  the  most  general  ideal  of  all :  a  happy  home.  And 
to  thousands  upon  thousands  Almighty  God  accords 


LEANNESS   OF   SOUL.  149 

all  the  means  for  the  achievement  of  this  ideal,  — 
health,  wealth,  friends,  occupation,  a  true  wife,  a 
kind  husband,  children,  a  suitable  residence.  Until 
you  enter  that  family  you  admire  them.  You  say 
that  they  have  everything  that  anybody  could  wish 
for.  But  when  you  have  crossed  the  threshold,  when 
you  have  peered  behind  the  screen,  you  feel  that 
something  is  lacking.     What  is  it  ? 

And  alas !  with  our  Religion  itself  it  is  even  so. 
Many  an  honest  soul  grows  up  with  the  desire  to  be 
religious,  —  not  merely  because  other  people  are  so, 
but  because  the  secret  soul  itself  demands  it.  And, 
so  far  as  the  forms  and  means  of  religion  are  con- 
cerned, this  desire  is  granted.  The  stress  of  ancestral 
example,  the  attractions  of  friendship,  the  use  of 
family  prayer,  the  customs  of  the  Prayer  Book,  the 
strange  other-world  persuasions  of  the  House  of  God, 
with  prayers  and  hymns  and  sermons  and  sacraments 
and  almsgiving,  —  all  these  are  present  to  the  soul. 
The  form  of  godliness  is  there.  But  the  soul  gets  no 
further.  Its  morality  just  lacks  the  note  of  real 
religion.  There  is  something  narrow  and  niggardly 
and  cold  about  it.  Such  persons  remind  us  of  that 
stern  description  by  Dante,  in  the  third  canto  of  the 
Inferno,  of  that  motley,  miserable  crowd  who  moan 
and  are  buffeted  in  the  vestibule  of  the  Pit,  mingled 
with  the  fallen  angels  who  dared  neither  to  rebel  nor 
to  be  faithful,  but  "  were  for  themselves,"  —  God  has 
sent  leanness  into  these  souls.  What  is  the  matter 
with  them  ? 


150  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

3.  Are  you  not  ready  with  the  answer?  Is  not 
the  disappointing  story  its  own  answer  ?  If  the  Old 
Testament  history  of  the  Jews  is  a  parable  of  human 
life ;  if  these  old  psalms,  as  we  repeat  them,  are  a 
true  confession  also  out  of  our  own  hearts,  is  it  not 
plain  what  is  lacking  to  all  of  thes6  various  characters 
of  mankind,  where  the  heart's  desire  has  been  satis- 
fied and  still  the  soul  is  lean  ? 

On  the  whole  the  Jewish  people  in  the  Bible  his- 
tory are  the  impersonation  of  selfishness.  They 
reserved  for  themselves  what  was  meant  for  mankind. 
The  final  reason  why  they  rejected  their  own  Messiah 
was  because  they  would  not  admit  that  He  was  "  the 
Desire  of  all  nations,"  —  they  wished  to  have  Him 
alone  as  their  private  and  particular  Desire.  And 
when  Christianity  began  to  spread,  and  to  reach  by 
its  own  momentum  over  the  barriers  of  Judaism  into 
the  broad  Gentile  world,  —  when  a  Peter  had  to  learn 
by  a  vision  that  God  counts  nothing  common  or  un- 
clean ;  when  a  Paul  had  to  hear  that  ringing  com- 
mand, "  Depart,  for  I  will  send  thee  far  hence  unto 
the  Gentiles,"  —  then  it  cost  even  the  Christian  Jews 
many  years  of  debate  and  self-conquest  before  they 
would  admit  that  their  Saviour  could  be  the  Lamb 
that  taketh  away  the  sins  of  the  world.  He  who 
twists  God's  gifts  to  his  own  self-worship  will  lose 
what  they  were  intended  to  produce  in  him.  The 
desire  of  his  heart  may  be  given  him,  but  himself  will 
be  unfruitful.      The  man  who  hoards  his  money  gets 


LEANNESS  OF  SOUL.  151 

naught  with  it.  Each  man,  each  family,  each  nation 
must  recognize  this  essential  reciprocity  of  life ;  that 
each  of  us  is  part  of  a  great  brotherhood,  of  a  suffer- 
ing and  needy  brotherhood  ;  that  these  desires  of  our 
single  hearts  are  also  the  desires  of  all  hearts,  so  that 
all  have  rights  in  them  if  even  to  one  heart  the  desire 
be  granted.  "  Give  up,  and  you  shall  have  ;  empty 
self,  and  all  is  yours,  even  God.  We  are  heirs  of 
God.  In  devoting  ourselves  emphatically  we  possess 
ourselves,  we  are.  So  Christ's  self-sacrifice  for  us ; 
so  God's  self-sacrifice  in  creation.  It  is  no  loss. 
Even  ordinary  men  say,  '  I  live  in  that  which  I  love, 
that  to  which  I  have  given  my  being,  my  soul.'  "  ^ 

So  long  as  our  desires  are  still  unsatisfied  there  is 
wide  room  for  self-deception  in  this  regard.  While 
the  man  who  desires  knowledge  is  still  learning; 
while  the  man  who  desires  wealth  is  amassing  riches  ; 
while  the  man  who  desires  social  prestige  is  mount- 
ing the  rounds  of  the  ladder  ;  while  the  man  who 
desires  political  power  is  working  for  his  office,  — 
the  man,  to  achieve  his  own  ends,  is  obliged  to  think 
so  much  of  others,  and  to  do  so  much  for  others,  that 
there  is  a  semblance  of  unselfishness  in  his  demeanor. 
But  when  we  have  climbed  the  pinnacle  and  acquired 
our  heart's  desire,  then  comes  the  supreme  test  of 
character.  To  have  your  riches  and  not  hoard  them, 
nor  use  them  for  mere  selfish  ends  ;  to  have  the  social 

1  Adapted  from  an  anonymous  quotation  in  Thorold's  "Oiaim 
of  Chi'ist  on  the  Young,"  p.  16. 


152  LEANNESS  OF   SOUL. 

power  or  the  political  power,  aud  then  to  wield  these 
as  a  sacred  trust ;  to  know  more  than  most  men,  and 
not  to  be  sated  by  one's  knowledge,  nor  tired  of  it, 
nor  cynical,  nor  superior  ;  to  be  the  head  of  a  happy 
home,  and  not  to  yield  to  the  temptation  which  lures 
one  to  regard  one's  home  as  self-contained  and  self- 
sufficient,  as  in  itself  an  end ;  to  have  all  the  helps 
and  safeguards  of  religion,  and  not  to  hug  them  as  if 
it  were  no  matter  that  others  perish  provided  we 
ourselves  be  saved ;  not  to  have  the  consolations  of 
God  small  with  us  for  the  reason  that  we  have  made 
them  small,  —  in  short,  to  be  like  Israel,  to  whom 
pertained  the  adoption,  and  the  glory,  and  the  cove- 
nants, and  the  giving  of  the  law,  and  the  service  of 
God,  and  the  promises ;  whose  were  the  fathers,  and 
of  whom,  as  concerning  the  flesh,  Christ  came,  —  to 
be  like  Israel  in  such  things,  but  withal  unlike  Israel 
in  this  :  that  we  do  not,  as  Israel  did,  make  the  word 
of  God  of  none  effect  for  our  own  selves  because, 
being  ignorant  of  God's  righteousness,  we  go  about 
to  establish  our  own  righteousness,^  —  that  will  be 
the  final  standard  of  judgment,  when  the  souls  that 
on  earth  were  satisfied  meet  the  scrutiny  of  the 
Most  High. 

And  believe  me,  my  brothers,  nothing  but  the 
reality  of  our  relation  to  God,  persistently  recognized 
by  the  soul,  will  enable  us  to  stand  that  test.  Why 
should  you,  when  you  have  got  your  desire,  still  go 

1  Romans  ix.  1-5. 


LEANNESS   OF   SOUL.  168 

on  expending  yourself  ?  There  is  no  sufficient  reason 
except  one :  that  God's  Being  is  one  perpetual  ex- 
penditure for  you,  and  so  yours  should  be  for  Him, 
for  your  fellows  in  Him.  As  Christ  said,  "  My  Father 
worketh  hitherto,  as  I  work."  To  feel  that  the  life 
of  unselfishness  is  not  a  waste  of  self,  or  an  oblitera- 
tion of  self,  or  a  disappointment  of  self,  but  lather  a 
devotion,  a  free  dedication,  a  realization  of  one's  best 
self,  because  self  is  nothing  without  God  who  made 
it,  and  on  whom,  as  God's  creature,  it  depencj^s,  — 
this  is  the  one  preventive  of  that  practical  abortion  of 
self,  that  miserable  self-destruction  in  the  very 
moment  of  self-satisfaction  which  is  indicated  so 
pathetically  in  this  refrain  of  Haggai's  psalm  :  "  He 
gave  them  their  desire  :  and  sent  leanness  withal  into 
their  soul." 

It  is  the  consciousness  of  this  utter  need  of  the 
soul  that  has  been  blessed  by  God  to  hold  fast 
to  God  in  the  blessing,  which  pervades  that  other 
psalm  which  David  composed  ere  going  out  to  battle 
and  victory :  "  The  Lord  hear  thee  in  the  day  of 
trouble  :  the  Name  of  the  God  of  Jacob  defend  thee. 
Send  thee  help  from  the  sanctuary,  and  strengthen 
thee  out  of  Zion.  Remember  all  thy  ofiFerings  :  and 
accept  thy  burnt  sacrifice.  Grant  thee  thy  heart's 
desire  :  and  fulfil  all  thy  mind.  Some  put  their  trust 
in  chariots,  and  some  in  horses  :  but  we  will  remember 
the  Name  of  the  Lord  our  God." 

Let  us  too  have  a  lively  remembrance  of  that  Name. 


154  LEANNESS   OF   SOUL. 

Not  merely  in  our  hours  of  effort  and  of  painful  con- 
quest, but  in  the  day  of  achievement  and  success,  let 
us  hold  close  and  closer  to  Him  for  whom  we  live, 
in  whom  we  die,  to  whom  alone  belongs  the  soul 
that  He  has  vouchsafed  to  satisfy.  Thus  alone  shall 
we  be  preserved  from  the  spiritual  leanness  that  blasts 
the  character  of  so  many  that  on  earth  are  fortunate. 


XTI. 

IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

Where  thei'e  is  no  vision  the  people  perish.  —  Proverbs 
xxix.  18. 

THIS  is  an  allusion  to  the  prophets  and  to  what 
followed  in  Israel  when  the  prophets  were 
lacking ;  for  it  was  the  prophets  who  supplied  to  the 
people  their  vision,  —  or  rather  it  was  they  that 
opened  the  people's  eyes  to  see  the  vision  which  from 
time  to  time  was  there  before  them,  if  only  they 
would  recognize  it.  The  phrase  of  our  text  carries 
us  back  from  the  period  of  the  kings  to  the  period  of 
the  judges.  You  will  remember  that  when  the 
Israelites  were  first  settling  down  in  Palestine,  after 
Moses  and  Joshua  had  brought  them  up  out  of 
Egypt,  their  political  condition  was  somewhat  dis- 
organized. The  various  tribes  were  more  or  less 
shifting  for  themselves  ;  the  nation  of  Israel  was  not 
yet  welded  into  compact  unity.  Different  judges 
appeared,  now  in  this  tribe  and  now  in  that ;  and 
sometimes  more  than  one  judge  appeared  at  the 
same  moment ;  and  the  tribe  that  was  thereby 
brought  into  prominence  assumed  for  the  time  be- 


156     IMPORTANCE   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

ing  a  preponderant  influence  among  the  others. 
Samuel  was  the  last  of  these  judges ;  and  it  is  in 
the  third  chapter  of  the  First  Book  of  Samuel  that 
we  read :  "'  The  word  of  the  Lord  was  precious  in 
those  days  ;  there  was  no  open  vision,"  —  that  is, 
prophetical  communications  from  God  were  rare  in 
those  days,  and  no  messages  from  the  Lord  were 
publicly  promulgated.  For  the  function  of  the 
prophets  as  originally  understood  did  not  have  to 
do  alone,  or  even  chiefly,  with  predictions  as  to  the 
future,  but  rather  with  insisting  on  God's  presence 
and  providential  government  of  His  people,  with  ap- 
pealing to  men's  consciences,  and  encouraging  men's 
wills  to  obey  their  consciences,  —  in  short,  with 
opening  men's  eyes  to  the  vision  of  God  in  the  needs 
and  emergencies  of  their  present  existence.  The 
prophets  were  what  we  should  call  preacliers,  whose 
main  duty  then  as  now  was  to  sharpen  and  enlighten 
the  spiritual  insight  of  mankind  amid  the  changes 
and  chances  of  this  wicked  and  perplexing  world. 
But  in  the  times  of  the  judges,  as  in  all  times,  the 
political  and  social  condition  of  the  Israelites  reacted 
upon  their  religious  condition.  The  lack  of  unity 
and  concentric  purpose  in  their  secular  life,  the  mul- 
tification  of  their  interests,  and  the  conflict  of  petty 
purposes,  and  the  variety  of  exterior  dangers,  blurred 
and  blunted  the  spiritual  sense  not  only  of  the  people 
but  of  their  prophets  also  ;  and  even  those  prophets 
who   had   a   message   lacked   opportunity  to   make 


IMPORTANCE   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION.     157 

their  message  heard.  Every  man  did  what  was 
right  in  his  own  eyes ;  there  was  no  central  and 
recognized  authority,  and  so  no  open  vision.  It  was 
to  a  simihir  state  of  things  that  should  ensue  later  on, 
when  the  tribes  of  Israel  were  again  broken  up  and 
carried  into  captivity,  that  the  prophet  Amos  alluded 
when  he  said  :  "  Behold  the  days  come,  saith  the 
Lord  God,  that  1  will  send  a  famine  in  the  land,  not 
a  famine  of  bread,  nor  a  thirst  for  water,  but  of  hear- 
ing the  words  of  the  Lord :  and  they  shall  wander 
from  sea  to  sea,  and  from  the  north  even  to  the 
east,  they  shall  run  to  and  fro  to  seek  the  word  of 
the  Lord,  and  shall  not  find  it. .  In  that  day  shall 
the  fair  virgins  and  young  men  faint  for  thirst."  It 
was  Samuel's  errand  to  correct  this  state  of  things  in 
his  day  ;  first  to  impart  unity  and  cohesion  to  the 
social  being  of  his  people,  and  then  to  renew  and 
clarify  their  sense  of  God,  —  to  make  their  vision 
"  open."  And  when  King  Solomon  was  gathering 
up  the  past  experiences  of  the  people  of  God,  and, 
after  wise  reflection,  was  condensing  these  experi- 
ences into  the  terse  apothegms  of  the  Book  of  Pro- 
verbs, this  was  the  lesson  that  he  drew  from  that 
moment  of  their  history  when  social  distraction  had 
weakened  the  moral  force  and  the  religious  insight 
of  the  Jews  :  "  Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people 
perish." 

We  shall  not  appreciate  the  full  force  of  this  con- 
clusion unless  we   first  consider  the  importance  of 


158     IMPORTANCE   OF   TUE   CHRISTIAN  VISION. 

man's  vision  of  things  in  all  the  departments  of  his 
life,  even  in  those  which  at  first  sight  seem  trivial 
and  quite  without  the  pale  of  religious  thought  and 
action.  There  is  nothing  whatsoever  in  this  life  of 
ours,  no  matter  how  mean  or  small  or  isolated,  which 
does  not  to  thoughtful  eyes  suggest  a  larger  vision, 
a  deeper  outlook,  a  wider  interdependence  of  the 
finite  upon  the  infinite  ;  and  in  every  stage  of  human 
civilization  and  every  department  of  human  endeavor 
those  nations  and  those  individuals  alone  have  been 
able  to  march  forward  and  achieve  what  we  call 
greatness  who  in  dealing  with  life's  littler  incidents 
have  been  able  to  discern  also  their  ideal  significance, 
—  the  bearing  of  the  parts  and  parcels  of  life  on  life's 
completer  whole.  This  is,  indeed,  the  highest  use  of 
poetry,  —  to  disclose,  or  at  any  rate  to  suggest,  the 
richness  and  the  sweetness  of  that  ideal  life  which 
alone  lends  dignity  and  value  to  the  real.  This  is 
why  Plato  was  right  in  saying  that  prose  is  fiction 
and  poetry  is  truth ;  for  no  man  knows  the  truth  of 
things  until  he  perceives  their  relations  to  the  in- 
finite, and  it  is  the  poetic  faculty  that  does  this  for 
us.  Poetry,  in  the  highest  sense  of  that  term,  trans- 
mutes life  into  truth.  Give  me  this  insight  into 
to-day,  and  I  have  also  the  past  and  the  future.^ 
There  is  a  higher  interconnection  of  things  whereby 

^  This  is  a  reminiscence  of  one  of  Emerson's  essays,  to  which  I 
cannot  now  refer  more  definitely  for  lack  of  books.  Cf.  Words- 
worth's poem,  "  Stepping  Westward." 


IMPORTANCE   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION.     159 

the  meal  in  the  firkin,  the  milk  in  the  pan,  the 
plough,  the  shop,  the  ballad  in  the  street,  the  gait 
and  glance  of  the  wayfarer,  partake  of  vaster  issues 
and  a  sublimcr  meaning  than  appear  to  any  but  the 
visionary  eye.  A  single  flower  pressed  between  the 
leaves  of  a  well-worn  book,  how  trivial  it  appears  to 
the  casual  observer ;  but  to  hiin  who  knows  the 
human  soul  that  fingered  the  pages  of  that  volume 
and  left  within  it  this  fragile  relic  of  its  yearnings, 
how  large  a  piece  of  human  life  is  hereby  suggested, 
how  many  precious  memories  and  hopes  !  You  are 
walking  the  streets  of  some  venerable  city  in  Europe  ; 
you  have  come,  for  example,  to  the  classic  bridge 
that  spans  the  Tiber  close  to  the  Castle  of  San  An- 
gelo.  To  the  child  by  your  side  that  bridge  is  no 
more  than  any  other  bridge,  its  stones  than  other 
stones  ;  but  you,  in  crossing  it,  cannot  shut  your  eyes 
to  the  vision  that  inseparably  belongs  to  it.  Two 
worlds,  the  classic  and  the  modern,  for  you  there 
meet  and  mingle  and  your  eager  footsteps  are  ar- 
rested by  the  thousand  unseen  links  of  history  that 
bind  that  bit  of  stone  and  mortar  to  the  mysterious 
fortunes  of  mankind.  In  this  way  all  books  of  his- 
tory are  full  of  inevitable  visions  ;  and  to  the  writer 
who  in  telling  his  story  is  blind  to  them  we  deny  the 
title  of  historian.  And  who  is  the  truly  artistic 
painter  ?  The  man  who  by  dexterous  tricks  of 
brush  and  pigment  can  make  a  copy  of  an  actual 
fragment  of  natural  scenery,  bare  and  isolated,  and 


160     IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

cut  four-square  as  by  your  window-pane  ?  No ;  not 
at  all.  Not  so  have  wrought  our  Millets  and 
Corots  and  Daubignys,  our  Whistlers  and  Turners. 
Rather  we  value  their  handiwork  because  they  have 
visions  to  show  us,  —  glimpses  into  the  connections 
between  Nature's  impressions  and  the  higher  world 
of  sentiment  which  man  has  fastened  to  them ;  so 
that  the  sower  starting  out  in  the  fields  in  the  first 
flush  of  morning  becomes  typical  of  the  long  and 
difficult  endeavors  of  all  mankind  ;  and  the  battered 
hulk  of  the  Fighting  T^m^raire  towed  up  the  Thames 
at  sundown  is  suggestive  of  the  heroism  of  the  ages. 

This  sense  of  the  larger  life  within  us  and  around 
us  exists  more  or  less  in  every  ma;n ;  it  is  the  mark 
of  the  man  in  contrast  to  the  beast.  Almost  all  men 
are  in  some  measure  prompted  and  sustained  and  im- 
proved in  their  apparently  circumscribed  occupations 
by  the  consciousness,  duller  or  keener,  that  they  and 
their  little  life  are  in  touch  with  a  larger  life,  and  there- 
from gather  a  higher  dignity  and  value.  Where  there 
is  no  vision,  the  people  perish  ;  and  from  generation  to 
generation  they  have  demanded  and  are  still  demand- 
ing of  their  teachers  and  preachers  to  be  reminded 
of  their  visions.  The  power  of  public  leaders  is  pre- 
cisely proportioned  to  their  ability  to  do  this  ;  so  that 
the  veriest  demagogue  loses  his  influence  over  the 
masses  unless  he  is  able  to  persuade  them  that  he  is 
leading  them  on  to  achieve  their  own  visions  and  to 
realize  their  relations  to  the  infinite  world. 


IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION.     161 

It  is  this  sense  of  wide  relations  and  of  an  infinite 
ideal  importance  which  renders  the  history  of  Attica 
in  the  days  of  classic  Greece  so  dignified  and  strong, 
so  full  of  inspiration  even  to  ourselves.  Measured 
by  our  standards  of  physical  size  or  of  commercial 
value,  what  a  tiny  place  was  Attica  !  —  how  trifling 
its  political  experiments,  how  small  its  armies,  its 
very  temples  on  the  Acropolis  how  diminutive  !  Yet 
the  story  of  Athenian  activities,  as  graven  on  stone 
by  the  chisel  of  Phidias  or  as  told  by  the  pen  of 
Thucydides,  is  fraught  with  significance  as  beauti- 
ful as  it  is  profound.  And  why  ?  Because  those 
Athenian  poets  and  artists  and  philosophers  and 
statesmen  were  so  truly  patriotic  that  in  doing  their 
small  deeds  they  rose  to  the  conception  of  great 
principles.  They  were  not  merely  citizens  of  Attica, 
but  men  of  the  world.  In  Greece  there  was  an  open 
vision,  —  so  much  so  that  when  Greece  as  a  political 
power  was  only  a  memory,  because  Rome  had  con- 
quered Greece,  nevertheless  the  individual  Greeks, 
with  their  vision  of  commerce  and  art  and  culture 
and  philosophy,  set  the  tone  for  all  the  world,  and 
furnished  the  language  which  was  to  be  the  vehicle 
for  the  transmission  of  Christianity  among  mankind. 

All  these  illustrations  of  my  theme  lead  up  to 
something  higher.  JNIan's  instinctive  consciousness 
of  the  infinite  relations  of  things  is  an  adumbration 
of  God.  To  have  these  visions  of  the  wider  and 
deeper  meaning  of  the  scenery  and  activities  of  hu- 
ll 


162    IMPOKTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

man  life  is  to  be  ready  for  the  vision  of  the  Divine 
Reality,  in  whom  alone  man  lives  and  has  his  being. 
"  In  Thy  light  shall  we  see  light,"  says  the  Psalmist. 
You  have  only  to  mention  God  to  your  child  and  he 
understands  you  ;  but  God  must  be  mentioned.  The 
prophets  must  prophesy  constantly.  "  They  that 
fear  the  Lord  must  speak  often  one  to  another,  and 
think  upon  His  name."  There  nmst  be  an  open 
vision,  a  continual  reminding  of  human  souls  of  that 
mysterious  key  to  their  existence  which  they  are 
aware  of  but  so  easily  forget,  or  else  the  people 
perish.  The  religious  vision  is  the  only  thorough 
vision  of  the  world. 

This  is  a  fact  which  continually  comes  home  to  the 
careful  observer  of  human  operations  and  of  the 
course  of  human  thinking.  One  of  the  most  notice- 
able features  of* all  the  larger  movements  of  society 
and  the  schools  of  thought  in  whatever  department 
is  the  rapidity  and  the  naturalness  with  which  they 
assume  religious  phraseology.  Even  the  free-trader 
and  the  protectionist,  even  the  socialists  and  the 
nihilists,  even  the  materialists  and  the  agnostics,  not 
to  mention  the  philanthropists  and  the  artists  and 
the  devotees  of  science,  use  language  that  might  al- 
most be  borrowed  from  the  Prayer  Book.  Some 
who  observe  this  trait  laugh  at  it  ;  but  to  a  deeper 
insight  there  is  matter  here  of  the  most  serious  sug- 
gestion. Religious  sentiment  is  the  legitimate  out- 
come of  every  larger  vision  of  the  world.     God  is  the 


IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION.     163 

end  of  human  thinking  and  of  human  aspiration  ; 
He  alone  is  the  explanation  of  the  intricate  infinities 
of  the  universe  ;  and  every  man  who  has  risen  up 
high  enough  out  of  the  littleness  of  his  particular  lot 
and  the  one-sidedness  of  his  particular  activities  to 
be  able  to  grasp  any  of  their  higher  connections  and 
more  generous  responsibilities,  —  every  such  man  is 
in  fact  feeling  after  God,  if  haply  he  may  find  Him  ; 
and  if  the  man  do  not  find  Him,  if  there  be  no  open 
vision,  then  he  is  bound  to  succumb  finally  either  to 
the  disposition  of  impatient  violence  or  else  of  dis- 
satisfied despair.  Great  causes  move  slowly,  even  as 
the  world  does.  To  seek  to  attain  one's  end  by  vio- 
lence is  to  destroy  what  ought  to  be  fulfilled ;  to  de- 
spair of  one's  end  is  to  tumble  back  again  into  the 
isolation  and  emptiness  of  the  individual  who  has  no 
vision  at  all ;  and  the  only  way  to  check  the  impulse 
to  be  violent  on  the  one  hand  or  discouraged  on  the 
other  is  to  press  on  from  the  vision  of  the  infinities 
of  Nature  to  that  of  the  Infinite  God,  —  to  set  God 
always  before  us.  Without  the  lower  \asion,  the 
people  perish  temporarily  ;  without  the  higher,  they 
perish  eternally.  And  the  best  moments  of  our  ex- 
istence here  are  those  when  our  very  efforts  for  some 
human  cause,  some  project  or  party,  transport  us  by 
their  own  momentum  up  into  a  higher  plane,  where 
God  is  seen  to  be  tlie  thing  that  we  are  longing  for ; 
and  the  reverent  spirit  does  obeisance  to  Him,  until 
from   that   Divine   intercourse  we    acquire   a  more 


164     IMPORTANCE   OF  THE  CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

patient  courage  and  an  even  more  enthusiastic  de- 
votion to  the  earthly  schemes  and  causes  in  which 
we  are  engaged.  Hereby  nature  itself  conspires  with 
spirit  to  emancipate  us  from  nature's  fetters.  The 
change  in  our  point  of  view  makes  our  whole  life 
seem  changed.  As  when  in  the  rapid  movements  of 
a  journey  the  familiar  features  of  one^  fatherland 
wear  a  new  aspect,  and  the  homeliest  objects  please 
us  most,  as  when  to  him  who  has  climbed  a  moun- 
tain-top even  the  features  of  the  landscape  which 
near  by  are  ugly  appear  pictorial,  so  if  once  we  rise 
here  to  the  vision  of  our  God,  then  all  earth's  tasks 
and  trials  and  ambitions  become  purified  and  beauti- 
fied in  the  light  of  God. 

"  Who  sweeps  a  room  as  for  God's  laws 
Makes  that  and  the  action  fine." 

Here  lies  the  great  line  of  difference  between  men  and 
men ;  not  in  the  difference  of  occupation,  or  even  of 
talents  and  fortune,  but  in  the  presence  or  absence  in 
them  of  this  vision  of  the  soul.  In  the  one  case  the 
day-laborer  at  his  toil,  the  scientist  with  his  materials 
and  experiments,  the  money-maker  with  his  buying 
and  selling  and  his  endless  ventures,  —  yes,  even 
the  so-called  religious  man  with  his  mint,  anise,  and 
cumin,  his  prayers  and  ideals  of  charity  and  acts  of 
worship  !  —  all  these  alike  are  narrowed,  absorbed, 
and  lost  in  the  nearer  and  evident  details  of  a  busi- 
ness that  is  selfish  and  small  and  without  honor,  be- 


IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION.     165 

cause  ministering  only  to  vanity,  or  idle  curiosity,  or 
blind  greed  of  gain,  or  to  some  sense  of  momentary 
need.  Fools  that  tear  down  their  barns  to  build 
greater  ones,  not  knowing  that  this  night  shall  their 
soul  be  required  of  them,  not  perceiving  that  our 
every  smallest  act  issues  in  the  vast  beyond !  In  the 
other  case  we  see  men  whose  employments  to  out- 
ward eyes  are  identical  with  those  of  their  fellows, 
but  who  in  their  acts  and  words  and  wishes  betray  a 
certain  consciousness  of  our  relation  to  that  ineffable 
Divine  Reality  whose  present  perfection  and  super- 
natural power  imparts  the  quality  of  eternity  to  all 
we  think  and  do.  Thank  God  that  in  every  nation 
there  are  some  such  as  these ;  for  "  where  there  is 
no  vision,  the  people  perish."  And  oftentimes  that 
strange  and  painful  feeling  of  unreality,  which  even 
religious  men  experience  in  regard  to  their  religion, 
when  nothing  seems  true,  or  right,  or  good,  or  profit- 
able to  them,  when  faith  seems  an  hallucination  and 
duty  a  figment  and  prayer  a  mockery,  and  all  en- 
deavors after  goodness  hopeless  and  self-contradic- 
tory, when  sermons  and  sacraments  seem  dreary  and 
barren,  as  if  all  real  religion  were  wiped  out  from 
the  world,  —  oftentimes  this  perplexing  and  disheart- 
ening condition  of  soul  is  mainly  due  to  a  temporary 
obscuration  of  that  higher  spiritual  vision  by  which 
our  nobler  life  is  fed. 

Men  and  brethren,  if  there  be  any  place  where  this 
theme  is  appropriate,  it  is  here  at  this  capital  of  our 


166     IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN   VISION. 

country.  There  are  dwelling  in  this  city  many  whose 
especial  business  is  the  conduct  of  our  national  af- 
fairs. As  members  of  the  Executive  Government, 
as  statesmen  and  lawgivers,  as  jurists  and  judges 
of  the  law,  nay,  even  as  mere  voters,  it  lies  with 
them  to  direct  the  fortunes  and  to  mould  the  man- 
ners of  our  strangely  heterogeneous  people.  On 
them  all  eyes  are  centred ;  to  them  all  wishes 
turn.  Yet  how  difficult  it  is  for  them,  and  for  us 
who  are  their  witnesses,  to  recollect  sufficiently 
the  gravity  of  their  tasks  !  how  readily  they  lose 
themselves  in  the  multitude  of  details !  Pestered  by 
office-seekers,  worried  by  the  claims  of  partisans, 
tempted  by  private  interests,  discouraged  by  the  ob- 
stacles to  a  fulfilment  of  large  views,  how  easy  it  is 
for  them  to  sink  down  on  to  a  low  and  temporizing 
plane  of  thought  and  action.  One  thing  alone  can 
save  them,  —  can  hold  them  up  and  keep  them  true 
to  their  original  vocation  :  they  must  retain  their 
vision  before  them  always.  Often  and  often  they 
must  clarify  their  souls  to  behold  the  ideal  of  their 
task,  —  to  see  the  fair  form  of  our  fatherland  beck- 
oning them  to  be  true  above  all  things  to  her,  whose 
virtue  and  fair  fame  are  in  their  keeping  ;  yes,  and 
true  to  the  God  of  our  fatherland.  Whose  holy  will 
it  is  to  operate  across  and  by  means  of  our  erring 
human  wills ;  they  must  set  God  always  before  them. 
And  certainly  this  morning,  when  the  thoughts  of  all 
of  us  are  drawn  to  the  sudden  death  of  one  of  the 


IMPORTANCE   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN    VISION.     167 

most  prominent  members  ^  of  our  national  govern- 
ment, we  have  a  striking  enforcement  of  my  theme  ; 
for  he  of  whom  we  are  thinking,  with  whose  be- 
reaved family  we  are  mourning,  as  the  more  hidden 
and  domestic  and  pei"sonal  traits  of  liis  character  are 
revealed  to  us,  is  found  to  have  been  a  person  the 
motive  of  whose  public  action  was  this  secret  con- 
sciousness of  responsibility  to  God.  The  late  Secre- 
tary of  the  Treasury  was  a  God-fearing  man  ;  and  it 
was  because  he  realized  so  keenly  the  solemnity  of 
the  trust  conunitted  to  him,  the  bearing  of  his  actions 
on  the  life  of  this  nation  and  the  world,  that  al- 
though he  was  aware  that  disease  was  weakening 
him,  he  toiled  bravely  on,  and  died  at  the  post  of 
duty.  His  very  last  act  was  the  great  oration  in 
which  he  sought  to  convince  his  countrymen  that  it 
will  not  do  for  statesmen  to  handle  the  commercial 
interests  of  this  nation  sordidly,  or  selfishly,  or  rashly, 
because  even  the  gold  and  silver  that  we  buy  and 
sell  and  coin  have  a  determining  influence  on  our 
higher  welfare  as  social  and  thinking  men.  That 
last  speech  of  his  was  a  sample  of  the  higher  vision. 
God  was  not  mentioned  in  it ;  but  to  those  who 
knew  the  speaker,  it  is  easy  now  to  recognize  that 
the  thought  of  God  and  of  each  man's  responsibility 
to  God  was  behind  that  speech. 

1  This  is  a  reference  to  the  late  Mr.  Windoni,  who  died  the  end 
of  January,  1891.  This  sermon  was  preached  on  Sexagesima 
Feb.  1,  1891. 


168     IMPORTANCE   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  VISION. 

And  need  I  remind  you,  my  brothers,  that  nothing 
will  help  us  to  catch  this  spirit  so  much  as  the 
prayerful  study  of  the  life  and  words  of  Jesus  Christ 
our  Master  ?  In  the  pages  of  the  Gospels  we  have 
the  record  of  the  Perfect  Man,  —  of  One  who  had 
the  beatific  vision,  who  saw  everything  in  the  light 
of  God.  How  He  looked  things  through,  and  men 
through,  seeing  behind  men's  purposes  God's  pur- 
pose, and  behind  men's  labors  the  operations  of  the 
Most  High.  His  was  the  true  presence  of  mind. 
His  moderation  was  known  unto  all  men,  because  to 
Him  God  was  at  hand.  "Pilate  saith  unto  Him, 
Art  Thou  a  king  then  ?  Jesus  answered  him.  Thou 
sayest."  "  My  kingdom  is  not  of  this  world.  If  My 
kingdom  were  of  this  world,  then  would  My  servants 
fight."  "  Thinkest  thou  that  I  cannot  now  pray  to 
My  Father,  and  He  shall  presently  give  Me  more 
than  twelve  legions  of  angels  ?  But  how  then  shall 
the  Scriptures  be  fulfilled,  that  thus  it  must  be  ? " 
"  Peter  saith  unto  Him,  Though  all  men  shall  be 
offended  because  of  Thee,  yet  will  I  never  be 
offended.  Jesus  said  unto  him.  This  night  thou 
shalt  deny  Me  thrice."  "Why  tempt  ye  Me,  ye 
hypocrites?  Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  which 
are  Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  that  are 
God's."  "His  mother  said  unto  Him,  Son,  why 
hast  Thou  thus  dealt  with  us?  behold  Thy  father 
and  I  have  sought  Thee  sorrowing  ?  And  He  said 
unto  them.  How  is  it  that  ye  sought  Me  ?     Wist  ye 


IMPORTANCE   OF  THE   CHRISTIAN  VISION.     169 

not  that  I  must  be  about  My  Father's  business  ? " 
Let  us  study  often  that  character,  those  words,  of 
Jesus  Christ.  Let  us  try  to  catch  somewhat  of  the 
singular  aloofness  of  manner  and  the  far-away  glance 
that  belonged  to  Jesus  because,  though  fully  alive 
to  the  present,  and  living  vigorously  in  this  passing 
world.  He  still  contemplated  time  in  the  view  of 
eternity,  in  the  vision  of  the  Eternal  Father,  with 
whom  is  no  variableness.  Without  that  same  vision, 
we  and  all  people  perish. 


XIII. 

SELF-PRESERVATION    BY    SELF-SACRIFICE.^ 

Oh,  all  ye  works  of  the  Lord,  bless  ye  the  Lord :  Praise 
Him  and  magnify  Him  forever.  —  Song  of  the  Three 
Children,  v.  35. 

I  beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the  mercies  of  God, 
that  ye  present  yom-  bodies  a  living  sacrifice,  holy,  acceptable 
unto  God,  which  is  your  reasonable  service.  —  Romans  xii.  1. 

PERHAPS  you  have  sometimes  wondered,  my 
brethren,  why  we  give  up  the  Te  Deum  and 
say  the  Beuedicite  in  Lent.  Lent  is  supposed  by 
some  to  be  a  sombre  season,  yet  the  Benedicite  is  so 
gladsome  ;  and  besides,  there  are  passages  of  the  Te 
4  Deum,  with  its  reference  to  the  life  and  death  and 
passion  of  Jesus  Christ,  which  are  certainly  appro- 
priate at  this  time.  Nevertheless  if  you  will  look  at 
the  matter  more  closely,  I  think  you  will  see  the 
wisdom  of  our  custom,  and  recognize  that  the  Bene- 
dicite is  quite  the  most  appropriate  service  of  song 
that  we  can  possibly  offer  at  this  Lenten  season. 

For  what  are  the  sum  and  substance  of  that  mag- 
nificent chant  of  the  three  children  in  Nebuchad- 
nezzar's  furnace  of  fire   which   we  have  just  been 

1  Ash-Wednesday  sermon. 


SELF-PRESERVATION  BY   SELF-SACRIFICE.     171 

singing  ?  Is  it  not  this  :  that  nothing  whatsoever  in 
the  whole  universe  of  being,  physical,  mental,  or 
moral,  exists  for  itself,  —  that  it  is  all  for  God  ;  that 
we  are  God's  creatures,  and  as  such  belong  to  God ; 
and  that  when  we  and  all  living  things,  in  this  or 
any  world,  fulfil  God's  word  and  serve  Him  and  bless 
Him,  and  thereby  magnify  Him,  we  are  simply  doing 
what  we  were  meant  for,  because  God  created  us  for 
His  glory  ?  "  It  is  He  that  hath  made  us,  and  not 
we  ourselves." 

And  is  not  this  the  great  lesson  of  the  Lenten 
Fast,  brought  home  to  us  by  its  regimen  and  services 
in  every  possible  way  ?  And  when  we  stand  up  of 
an  Ash  Wednesday  or  a  Sunday  morning  and  say  this 
Benedicite  between  the  Scripture  Lessons,  are  we  not 
summing  up  and  condensing  into  one  enthusiastic 
expression  all  the  words  of  our  lips  and  the  medita- 
tions of  our  hearts  at  this  special  period  of  the 
Church's  Year,  —  simply  putting  into  song  that  which 
we  see  to  be  the  true  motive  and  ideal  of  our  Chris- 
tian life  ? 

So  to-day  I  make  that  theme  my  text.  I  wish  to 
put  before  you  that  great  underlying  subject  which 
Lent  is  intended  to  emphasize,  —  the  true  view  of  self- 
sacrifice,  the  gladsome  view.  Let  us  think  this 
morning  of  the  Christian  view  of  the  actual  fact  of 
every  creature's  life.  Self-sacrifice  is  the  inevitable 
law  of  the  universe ;  and  Christ  shows  us  that  self- 
sacrifice  is  true  self-preservation.     "  He  that  loseth 


172    SELF-PRESERVATION  BY   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

his  life  shall  save  it."  This  is  what  Saint  Paul  was 
thinking  of  in  that  passage  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans  which  is  part  of  my  text  to-day :  "  I  beseech 
you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the  mercies  of  God,  that 
ye  present  your  bodies  a  living  sacrifice,  holy,  accept- 
able to  God,  which  is  your  reasonable  service,"  that 
is,  the  service  which  falls  in  with  what  reason  sees  to 
be  the  facts  of  human  life. 

1.  Consider,  first,  that  the  keenest  instinct  of  each 
individual  is  the  conviction  of  his  own  value.  This 
is  manifest  by  the  universal  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion. Some  creatures  flee  to  save  themselves  ;  some 
fight  to  save  themselves ;  but  to  defend  and  maintain 
their  individual  being  is  the  common  instinct  of  all. 
When  a  poor  wretch  commits  suicide,  that  is,  when 
he  gives  up  the  battle  for  life,  there  is  something  in 
the  heart  of  every  sane  ofi-looker  which  declares  that 
the  suicide  has  been  untrue  to  himself,  untrue  to  the 
law  of  his  own  being. 

Nevertheless  when  we  look  out  upon  the  universe 
at  large,  the  tendency  of  things  appears  at  first  sight 
to  be  contradictory  of  this  supreme  law  of  individual 
self-preservation.  Nature  everywhere  seems  careless 
of  the  individual.  The  very  conception  of  general 
law  appears  to  be  so.  The  single  atom  cannot  be  for 
itself ;  it  is  one  of  a  mass  of  atoms,  and  the  rules  of 
the  mass  control  it.  The  single  man,  no  matter  how 
he  loves  his  single  being,  does  not  now,  and  never 
for  one  moment  did,  exist  singly.     He  has  been  from 


SELF-PRESERVATION  BY   SELF-SACRIFICE.     173 

the  start  a  member  first  of  his  family,  then  of  the 
Church  and  the  State,  next  of  the  existing  race  of  men 
throughout  the  earth,  and  finally  of  the  human  race 
as  a  whole,  whose  strange,  mysterious  past  life  modi- 
fies its  present  life.  There  is  a  general  law  of  pro- 
gress and  of  decadence,  of  wealth  and  poverty,  of 
ignorance  and  knowledge,  of  righteousness  and  un- 
righteousness, which  finds  the  individual  at  the  very 
beginning  of  his  being,  and  shapes  him  and  constrains 
him.  "  All  we  are  members  one  of  another."  "  No 
man  liveth  to  himself,  nor  even  dieth  unto  himself." 
"  Ye  bear  one  another's  burdens."  If  the  universe  of 
being  be  regarded  as  chaos,  then  the  individual  has 
of  course  no  meaning.  If  it  be  looked  upon  as  a 
cosmos,  then  the  very  orderliness  of  the  world  signi- 
fies the  overmastery  of  the  individual  for  the  benefit 
of  the  world.  In  either  view,  and  there  is  no  third 
alternative,  this  indomitable  instinct  of  ours  that  our 
individuality  is  precious,  and,  if  we  choose,  inviolable, 
seems  at  first  sight  a  pure  paradox. 

And  if  this  holds  good  of  the  aftairs  of  this  earth 
considered  by  itself,  how  much  more  when  we  take 
this  earth  in  its  conjunction  with  the  myriads  of  other 
orbs  that  surround  it.  "  When  I  consider  the  heavens 
.  .  .  what  is  man  ?  "  If  the  microscope  widens  our 
view  of  the  relative  largeness  of  man  to  countless 
creatures  whose  being  is  inwrought  with  his,  the 
telescope  belittles  him  and  his  whole  physical  sphere. 
When  once  we  have  an  inklino-  of  the  innumerable 


174     SELF-PRESERVATION   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

systems  of  suns  and  stars,  of  which  our  whole  solar 
system  with  all  its  orbs  is  but  one,  it  seems  harder 
than  ever  to  maintain  that  any  individual  creature  of 
any  kind  is  intrinsically  valuable  on  its  own  account. 
Nevertheless  to  be  an  individual  is  to  have  ^;er  se 
that  idea,  and  to  maintain  it  at  every  cost.  It  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  individuality  to  recognize  that 
individuality  is  precious,  and  that  self-preservation  is 
our  highest  duty.  "  What  sliall  a  man  give  in  ex- 
change for  his  own  soul  ?  "  Nothing.  There  is 
nothing  that  man  or  God  Himself  can  give  you  that 
would  countervail  your  full  and  free  possession  of 
yourself.  That  is  the  simple  meaning  of  individuality 
to  itself.  What  then  shall  we  make  of  the  paradox 
before  us  ?  Why  is  it  that  the  very  notion  of  uni- 
versal physical  law,  and  national  and  social  and 
family  law,  dwindles  the  individual  till  he  scarcely 
seems  of  any  independent  value ;  while  all  the  time 
for  the  individual  to  be  at  all  (and  he  must  be^,  else 
there  would  be  no  society,  no  State,  no  Church,)  is  to 
know  that  he  is  most  valuable  ?  Surely,  men  and 
brethren,  it  comes  to  this :  the  apparent  paradox 
springs  from  man's  misconception  as  to  what  is  the 
function  of  individuality,  what  its  purpose  and  its 
power.  Our  modern  scientific  apprehension  of  the 
physical  universe  forces  us  to  this  conclusion,  —  that 
while  the  individual  is  a  fact  (if  there  be  any  such 
thing  as  fact),  nevertheless  the  use  of  the  individual 
is  not  for  independence  but  for  dependence,  and  that 


SELF-PRESERVATION   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE.     175 

self-sacrifice  is  self-preservation,  is  the  simple  recog- 
nition of  what  it  is  to  be  an  individual  and  where  his 
value  lies. 

3.  And  is  not  this,  which  is  the  revelation  of 
physical  and  social  science,  also  the  revelation  of  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  ?  Yes  ;  but  Christ  puts  new 
light  on  it,  transmutes  it.  Science  is  our  schoolmaster 
to  bring  us  to  Christ  ;  but  Christ  takes  us  further 
than  natural  or  social  science  can,  and  discloses  a  bet- 
ter motive  for  that  sacrifice  of  self  which  both  Christ 
and  science  declare  to  be  the  law  of  every  individual 
life.  To  preserve  yourself  is  your  rational  duty  ;  and 
in  order  to  preserve  yourself  you  must  devote  your- 
self. But  to  what,  to  whom  ?  To  God  in  Christ, 
because  you  are  God's  creatures  and  He  is  your  all- 
wise,  loving  Father.  If  only  you  have  eyes  to  see 
Him,  you  can  find  God  behind  every  earthly  case  of 
self-sacrifice,  —  behind  it  and  the  object  of  it ;  that 
is  the  gospel  explanation  of  our  law  of  individual 
self-sacrifice.     Let  us  examine  it  a  moment. 

The  purpose  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  is  not 
to  revolutionize  this  world,  but  to  enlighten  us  as 
to  how  to  use  this  world  as  not  abusing  it ;  to  en- 
lighten us  as  to  how  to  avail  ourselves  of  its  laws. 
God  made  this  world,  and  hence  its  laws  are  His  laws, 
—  the  expression  of  God's  mind.  And  forasmuch  as 
it  is  very  easy  for  us  to  forget  God  in  the  world,  to 
lose  sight  of  Him,  to  have  our  consciousness  dulled 
to  Him,  and  so  to  fancy  that  this  world  is  an  end  for 


176     SELF-PRESERVATION  BY   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

US  ill  itself,  and  that  its  laws  have  nothing  behind 
them,  the  whole  purpose  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is 
to  make  God  once  more  vivid  to  us,  —  as  Christ 
Himself  says,  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me  hath  seen  the 
Father."  Now,  when  we  look  at  Jesus  Christ  what 
do  we  see  ?  We  see  One  in  whom  our  idea  of  God 
as  our  INIaker  and  JNIaster  is  transfigured  into  the  idea 
of  God  as  our  Father.  The  reason  why  we  so  easily 
forget  God  in  the  world  is  because  we  think  of  Him 
too  much  as  merely  our  Maker  and  Master  ;  for  that 
is  a  hard  idea  ;  and  if  you  have  a  hard  idea  of  God, 
then  it  is  easy  to  take  instead  of  Him  the  blank  idea 
of  a  Law  that  cannot  be  broken,  which  is  a  hard  idea 
also.  As  Saint  Paul  sliows  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Romans,  to  think  of  God  simply  as  our  Maker  is  to 
think  of  ourselves  as  clay  in  the  hand  of  tlie  potter. 
All  notion  of  spontaneity  on  our  part,  of  mutual  al- 
legiance and  love  and  understanding  between  crea- 
ture and  Creator,  is  apt  to  disappear.  The  pure  idea 
of  God  as  Creator  is  very  grand ;  for  it  implies  that 
our  subservience  to  Him  is  boundless  because  His 
sovereignty  is  boundless.  According  to  that  idea, 
whatever  is  or  happens  we  must  take  on  faith  be- 
cause of  our  faith  in  God  ;  our  relation  to  Him  is 
one  of  utter  reliance  because  there  is  nothing  else  to 
rely  on.  But  although  the  idea  of  God  as  Creator 
is  thus  very  grand,  and  quite  in  consonance  with 
what  physical  science  teaches  us  as  to  the  inevitable 
dependence  of  the  individual  life  on  the  vaster  life 


sp:lf-preservation  by  self-sacrifice.   177 

around  it,  nevertheless  this  idea  is  one-sided.  It 
does  not  fit  in  witli  that  indomitable  sense  of  our  own 
individual  preciousness  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  onr  consciousness  of  our  being  as 
individuals.  If  I  myself  am  really  valuable  as  a  sep- 
arate being,  then  my  relation  to  God  must  be  such 
that  I  can  for  myself  respond  to  Him.  God  must  be 
ray  God  ;  it  is  not  enough  that  I  should  be  God's ; 
God  must  also  be  mine.  There  must  be  thorough 
mutuality  between  the  creature  and  the  Creator,  if 
the  creature's  sense  of  individuality  is  not  a  sham ; 
and  the  creature's  sense  of  individuality  cannot  be  a 
sham  if  his  sense  of  the  vast  outer  world  is  not  also 
a  sham,  for  both  senses  are  equally  part  and  parcel 
of  his  being.  Now,  this  mutuality  is  just  what  the 
revelation  of  Jesus  Christ  imparts  to  the  relation  be- 
tween God  and  man.  God  is  "  My  Father  and  your 
Father,"  Christ  declares.  Is  there  anything  more 
mutual,  more  reciprocally  spontaneous,  than  the  re- 
lation of  parent  and  child  ?  Is  not  the  very  being  of 
the  father  in  the  child,  so  tliat  the  child  is  the  ex- 
press image  of  the  ftither  ?  And  if  the  parent  be 
true  to  the  child,  and  the  child  true  to  the  parent, 
is  not  the  self-devotion  of  each  to  the  other  the  most 
spontaneous,  the  most  absolutely  mutual,  thing  in 
the  world  ?  And  if  you  see  the  chdd,  can  you  not 
in  him  see  the  father  also,  not  because  the  father's 
will  and  nature  is  mechanically  stamped  upon  the 
child,  but  because  the  child  of  his  own  free  will  ex- 

12 


178     SELF-PRESERVATION   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

presses  the  father's  will,  so  that  you  can  tell  what 
the  father  is  from  what  the  child  does  heartily  ? 

Thus  the  Christian  recognizes,  no  less  than  the  dis- 
ciple of  physical  science,  that  absolute  subservience  to 
a  power  outside  himself  is  the  law  of  every  individ- 
ual's life,  and  that  in  yielding  to  that  law  the  indi- 
vidual is  simply  yielding  to  his  own  instinct  of 
self-preservation  ;  only  the  Christian  has  transfigured 
the  yielding  to  a  law  into  devotion  to  a  Father, 
and  self-preservation  into  self-sacrifice.  Nay  more : 
the  moment  that  God  is  seen  to  be  our  Father,  so 
that  love  for  us  is  the  law  of  His  Life,  then  self- 
sacrifice  becomes  the  law  of  God's  life  with  us  no 
less  than  of  our  life  witli  God,  and  the  unity  of  the 
entire  universe  of  being  is  perceived.  Self-sacrifice 
is  the  law  of  this  world,  for  the  very  reason  that 
it  is  God's  world,  and  that  its  laws  are  the  ex- 
pression of  God's  Being.  God's  own  Being  is  one 
eternal  act  of  self-devotion  to  His  creatures  ;  and 
when  we  by  the  stress  of  circumstances  are  com- 
pelled to  sacrifice  ourselves,  we  are  in  reality  being 
compelled  up  towards  the  very  life  of  God ;  we  are 
being  told,  as  the  men  with  the  talents  were  told  in 
the  parable  :  "  Enter  thou  into  the  joy  of  thy  Lord  ;  " 
find  thy  joy  in  that  which  is  God's  joy.  Have  you 
never  noticed  in  your  intercourse  with  men  that,  if 
you  reverence  a  man,  your  reverence  for  him  always 
springs  from  some  glimmer  of  himself  in  you,  —  from 
the  fact  that  there  is  in  you  a  little  of  what  he  pos- 


SELF-PRESERVATION   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE.     179 

sesses  so  much  better  and  more  abundantly?  And, 
somewhat  in  the  same  manner,  does  it  not  impart  a 
new  and  far  more  personal  intensity  when  Christ  re- 
veals to  you  that  the  necessity  of  self-devotion  which 
belongs  to  the  life  of  every  man  corresponds  to  the 
absolute  self-devotion  to  His  children  which  belongs 
to  our  Heavenly  Father's  character  ? 

But  there  is  one  step  .more.  By  the  stress  of  cir- 
cumstances and  the  law  of  our  life  we  are  all  com- 
pelled to  self-sacrifice,  and  it  is  the  instinct  of  such 
self-devotion  in  us  that  makes  us  reverence  the  self- 
devotion  of  God  Almighty  to  His  children  ;  but  if  we 
would  be  verily  godlike,  we  must  not  merely  be  com- 
pelled to  self-devotion,  we  must  choose  it.  God's 
life  is  free,  and  ours  must  be  free ;  and  the  whole 
purpose  of  our  earthly  discipline  is  that  we  should 
win  back  the  liberty  wherewitli  Christ  hath  made  us 
free.  Do  you  remember  the  story  of  Hezckiah's 
great  temple  service  of  sacrifice  ?  and  do  you  remem- 
ber the  verse  with  which  it  ends  ?  "  And  when  the 
burnt-offering  began,  the  song  of  the  Lord  began  also 
with  the  trumpets."  And  do  you  not  see  the  mean- 
ing of  it  ?  ^  Not  in  cold  silence  did  their  sacrifice  go 
forward,  as  if  the  people  were  doing  a  task,  an  un- 
welcome duty  ;  but  with  a  burst  of  triumphant  music, 
expressive  of  the  joy  of  their  hearts,  because  their 

1  This  application  of  the  passage  from  Hezekiah  is  a  reminiscence 
of  one  of  Phillips  Brooks'  sermons  ;  but  I  am  unable,  at  this  dis- 
tance from  my  library,  to  make  the  reference  more  preciae. 


180     SELF-rRESERVATlON   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE. 

sacrifice  was  free.  And  this  song  of  joyful  self-devo- 
tion is  not  merely  called  by  the  prophet  the  people's 
song  ;  it  is  God's  song  too.  Many  and  many  a  man 
has  gone  far  on  in  life  making  the  inevitable  sacrifices 
which  all  life  claims  of  us,  but  making  them  reluc- 
tantly. The  rich  man  sacrifices  himself  to  the  laws 
of  money-rtlakiiig,  and  in  his  more  serious  moments 
he  finds  them  tiresome.  The  learned  man  devotes 
himself  to  books ;  but  sometimes  as  he  rises  and 
looks  out  of  his  study  windows,  he  finds  that  books 
grow  dull.  The  politician  devotes  himself  to  states- 
manship ;  the  teacher  to  teaching ;  the  lawyer  to  his 
clients ;  the  philanthropist  to  human  welfare ;  but 
often  and  often  the  question  presses  :  What  profit  is 
there  in  it  under  the  sun  ?  Oh,  my  brothers,  you  are 
very  young  and  very  thoughtless  if  that  question  has 
not  risen  in  your  heart  sometimes  and  tired  you! 
The  burnt-offering  goes  forward  in  all  our  lives,  but 
in  how  many,  many  cases  there  is  no  song  with  it ! 
Yet  to  walk  with  Jesus  is  to  catch  the  contagion  of 
His  song,  who,  for  the  joy  that  was  set  before  Him, 
endured  the  cross,  —  endured  it  because  He  was  the 
Son  of  God,  and  God  is  always  self-sacrificing,  and 
it  is  only  our  fallen  manhood  that  renders  self-sacrifice 
painful.  Self-devotion  is  the  very  note  of  love,  and 
God  is  Love.  And  you  and  I,  my  brothers,  because 
we  are  inviolable  individuals,  were  made  to  love,  — 
to  love  mankind  for  God's  sake  and  God  for  His  own 
sake.     Love  is  the  consecration  and  salvation  of  in- 


SELF-PKESERVATION   BY   SELF-SACRIFICE.     181 

dividuality.  It  is  putting  it  to  use.  And  just  so  far 
as  we  let  God's  love  transfigure  us,  we  are  saving  our 
life  in  sacrificing  it.     Perfect  love  casteth  out  fear. 

I  wish  I  could  speak  to  the  soul  of  the  most  selfish 
creature  present  here  to-day.  I  wish  I  could  bring 
him  to  Jesus,  and  leave  him  there  to  enter  into  the 
joy  of  our  Lord.  Is  there  any  one  so  blind  of  soul 
and  narrow  in  his  experience  as  not  to  have  seen  that 
even  earthly  love  makes  sacrifice  a  joy,  —  transfuses 
and  transforms  the  same  burdens  that  other  men  are 
bearing  bitterly,  unwillingly,  and  renders  them  wel- 
come burdens  ?  That  common  earthly  fact  is  a  re- 
flection of  the  Divine  eternal  fact  of  God's  own 
character,  in  whose  image  we  are  made.  And  Jesus 
our  Saviour  came  to  open  our  eyes  to  its  diviner 
meaning. 

And  Lent  is  intended  to  make  us  realize  this  as 
never  before,  —  to  give  us  a  chance  to  deny  ourselves 
that  we  may  find  ourselves,  —  to  put  us  on  the  alert 
for  new  openings  of  service  and  self-surrender  to  the 
Almighty  Father  in  whom  we,  have  our  being.  "  I 
beseech  you  therefore,  brethren,  by  the  mercies  of 
God,  that  ye  present  your  bodies  a  living  sacrifice, 
holy,  acceptable  unto  God,  which  is  your  reasonable 
service.  And  be  ye  not  conformed  to  this  world: 
but  be  ye  transformed  by  the  renewing  of  your  mind, 
that  ye  may  prove  what  is  that  good,  and  acceptable, 
and  perfect  will  of  God." 

Then  Lent  will  have  reallv  taught  us  our  Benedicite. 


XIV. 
SUNDAY    OBSERVANCE.! 

Remember  the  Sabbath  day,  to  keep  it  holy.  Six  days 
shalt  thou  labour,  and  do  all  thy  work :  but  the  seventh  day 
is  the  Sabbath  of  the  Lord  thy  God  :  in  it  thou  shalt  not  do 
any  work,  thou  nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  thy  manser- 
vant nor  thy  maidsei-vant.  nor  thy  cattle,  nor  thy  stranger 
that  is  within  thy  gates.  —  Exodus  xx.  8,  9,  10. 

I  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's  day,  and  heard  within 
me  a  great  voice,  as  of  a  trumpet,  saying,  I  am  Alpha  and 
Omega,  the  First  and  the  Last.  —  Rev.  i.  10,  11. 

'TPHE  first  step  towards  a  holy  Lent  is  that  we 
should  do  our  regular  duties  better ;  and  one 
of  our  regular  duties  is  the  observance  of  the  Lord's 
Day.     So  I  shall  speak  of  that  this  morning. 

I  have  put  side  by  side  these  two  passages  from 
the  Old  and  the  New  Testament  respectively,  because 
by  their  mere  juxtaposition  they  convey  a  lesson  on  a 
momentous  subject.  Read  them  thoughtfully,  first 
one  and  then  the  other  :  notice  the  variation  in  their 
tone ;  and  you  have  all  the  difference  between  the 
Law  and  the  Gospel  in  the  whole  matter  of  Sunday 
observance.     The  language  of  the  Fourth  Command- 

1  Lenten  Sermon. 


SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE.  183 

ment  is  narrow,  restrictive,  hard.  Behind  it  you  hear 
the  Mosaic  anathemas,  the  thunderiugs  of  Sinai.  In 
its  very  phraseology  you  can,  as  it  were,  foresee  the 
stiffness  of  Pharisaism.  Notice,  too,  the  compulsory, 
mechanical  character  of  the  ancient  patriarchal  system 
that  breathes  throughout  the  passage,  —  the  spirit  of 
which  our  New  England  Puritanism  was  in  part  an 
echo.  Under  the  patriarchal  regime  the  head  of  the 
house  was  its  master  ;  his  fiat  was  the  inflexible  law 
for  all ;  as  he  prayed,  so  must  the  wife  and  children 
and  servants  pray  ;  as  he  thought,  they  must  think  ; 
nay,  even  the  stranger  that  sojourned  under  his  roof 
nmst  think  and  do  likewise.  The  independence,  the 
individuality  of  the  single  soul,  of  every  soul,  finds 
small  expression  here.  Eeligion  is  a  tribal  matter, 
and  the  patriarch  is  the  head  of  the  tribe ;  and  if  you 
can  get  him  to  keep  the  commandment,  you  need 
have  no  concern  about  the  rest ;  they  are  bound  to 
do  likewise.  But  God,  who  in  sundry  ways  and 
divers  manners  hath  spoken  unto  the  fathers,  hath  in 
these  last  days  spoken  unto  us  by  His  Son.  Jesus 
Christ  has  showed  us  a  better  way.  There  was  use 
and  reason  in  the  earlier  way.  The  rigorism  of  the 
schoolmaster  forefends  and  fosters  the  free-will  of  the 
youth.  Freedom  would  be  nothing  to  any  man 
without  the  free-will  in  him  ;  and  free-will  nmst  be 
trained,  —  trained  to  make  use  of  freedom.  Freedom 
is  the  privilege  of  which  educated  free-will  avails 
itself.     Take  this  matter  of  the  Sabbath.    Before  the 


184  SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE. 

Christian  idea  of  the  Lord's  Day  could  enter  into  the 
world,  the  Jewish  idea  of  the  Sabbath  must  precede 
it,  and  the  Jewish  method  of  enforcing  the  Sabbath 
must  have  sway  wherever  the  Jew  should  range. 
You  must  snatch  the  soul  out  of  this  sinful  world, 
and  must  make  clear  to  it  the  contrast  between  God 
and  the  world,  before  you  can  trust  the  soul  in  the 
world,  to  be  in  it  but  not  of  it.  All  about  tlie  Jews, 
when  Moses  took  hold  of  thcni,  were  nations  so 
steeped  in  sin  that  the  idea  of  any  Sabbath,  mechan- 
ical or  free,  had  vanished  from  their  minds.  In  order 
that  the  idea  of  the  Sabbath  might  be  restored  to  the 
Jewish  soul,  it  was  necessary  to  hedge  off  the  Jews 
from  the  idolaters.  When  they  had  been  hedged  off 
long  enough  to  perceive  the  contrast  between  God's 
idea  of  the  world  and  the  idolater's  idea  of  it,  then 
the  Jew  would  be  ready  to  relinquish  his  narrow 
Sabbath  in  favor  of  the  Lord's  Day,  in  favor  of  the 
Christian  freedom.  "  Where  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord 
is,  there  is  liberty,"  —  there,  and  there  alone. 

Thus,  then,  after  reading  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  Exodus ;  after 
taking  careful  note  of  the  tone  of  it,  —  of  its  rigorism, 
its  narrow  definiteness,  its  externality,  its  insistence 
that  the  substance  of  the  Sabbath  is  to  be  ascertained 
by  the  presence  or  the  absence  in  it  of  mere  toil,  — 
pass  on  to  the  other  passage  in  the  Revelation  of 
Saint  John  the  Divine.  Are  we  not  standing  on  a 
different  plane,  —  breathing  a   higher    atmosphere? 


SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE.  186 

Here  is  no  command  about  Sunday  observance  at  all, 
but  rather  a  description  of  it ;  and  what  a  description  I 
How  far  away  we  are  from  all  precise  enactments ; 
from  arbitrary  distinctions  as  to  what  is,  and  what  is 
not,  work ;  from  the  mint,  anise  and  cumin,  the 
"  touch  not,  taste  not,  handle  not  "  of  Pharisaism. 
"  I  was  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's  Day,  and  heard 
within  me  a  great  voice,  as  of  a  trumpet,  saying,  I 
am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  Beginning  and  the  End." 
That  is  what  comes  of  keeping  the  Christian  Sabbath 
as  it  was  meant  to  be  kept ;  to  be  pervaded  by  the 
conscious  presence  of  the  Spirit  of  the  living  God  ;  to 
hear  within  one  s  soul  a  great  voice,  as  of  a  trumpet, 
speaking  of  the  underlying  Reality  of  things,  and 
saying,  "  I  am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  First  and 
the  Last."  It  is  no  longer  a  mere  question  of  exter- 
nality ;  of  doing  a  particular  something,  or  not  doing 
it :  of  working  or  resting  from  work  ;  of  reading  some 
books  and  letting  others  lie  ;  of  praying  more  prayers, 
or  fewer ;  of  going  to  church  instead  of  to  the  count- 
ing-house ;  of  gathering  one's  family  and  friends 
about  one,  and  keeping  holiday  at  home  ;  of  fingering 
the  religious  newspaper  instead  of  the  secular  news- 
paper. All  these  be  matters  of  detail,  questions  of 
method  ;  whereas  Saint  John  on  Patmos  had  gotten 
behind  details  and  methods  into  the  deeper  substance 
of  our  soul-life.  The  ideal  Sunday,  the  true  Sabbath 
of  the  soul,  is  an  occasion  for  laying  hold  simply  and 
directly  of  our  God,  —  of  Him  in  whom  we  live  and 


186  SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE. 

move  and  have  our  being.  As  we  drift  along  the 
swift,  relentless  current  of  time ;  as  days  and  weeks 
and  months  and  years  follow  one  another  in  breath- 
less haste ;  as  persons  crowd  upon  us  and  jostle  us ; 
as  books  and  business  and  the  varied  interests  of  our 
manifold  existence  liarry  us ;  as  anxieties  increase, 
and  sorrows  deepen,  and  riddle  upon  riddle  rises  up 
for  our  bewildered  intellects  and  hearts  to  puzzle 
over ;  as  the  essential  vacuity,  the  hopelessness  of  the 
world  dawns  upon  us,  if  we  be  "  without  God  in  the 
world,"  —  then,  if  we  are  not  utterly  superficial,  we 
come  to  realize  what  the  privilege  is  of  being,  once  in 
every  seven  days  at  any  rate,  in  the  Spirit  on  the 
Lord's  Day;  then  we  recognize  what  a  comfort  it 
is  in  life,  what  a  simplification  of  life,  what  a  restora- 
tion of  energy,  to  hear  deep  down  within  us  the  great 
voice  saying,  "  I  am  Alpha  and  Omega." 

My  dear  brethren  and  friends,  in  this  Lenten  ser- 
mon, on  this  Communion  Sunday,  I  wish  to  hold  up 
before  you  once  again  the  Christian  idea  of  Sunday 
observance.  We  hear  a  great  deal  nowadays  about 
the  importance  of  Sunday  even  from  the  secular 
point  of  view,  from  the  utilitarian  point  of  view. 
We  are  told  that  the  very  beasts  of  burden  do 
more  work,  and  in  the  long  run  better  work,  if 
they  rest  one  day  in  seven.  It  is  quite  true ; 
and  in  behalf  of  the  working-class  of  human  beings 
the  arguments  in  favor  of  the  Sabbath  are  practi- 
cally identical  with  the  arguments  that  the  laborers 


SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE.  187 

themselves  use  when  they  go  on  strikes  to  obtain 
fewer  and  shorter  hours  in  their  week-day  toil. 
These  be  good  arguments ;  they  are  true  and  tell- 
ing ;  but  they  do  not  help  us  forward  much  towards 
the  eternal  outcome  of  the  world,  —  towards  the 
spiritual  interpretation  of  human  existence.  If  we 
are  going  to  live  as  drones,  and  think  as  drones, 
and  recreate  as  drones,  I  cannot  see  tliat  it  makes 
much  difference  whether  or  no  we  make  haste 
to  rise  up  early  and  so  late  take  rest ;  I  cannot  see 
why  it  is  so  much  better  to  regulate  our  periods 
of  droning  or  to  shorten  them.  Droning  is  always 
droning,  no  matter  how  and  when  you  drone  ;  and  if 
you  want  to  stop  droning,  you  must  change  your  idea 
of  what  you  are  about,  —  not  necessarily  change  your 
occupation,  but  change  your  idea  of  it,  spiritualize  it, 
put  soul  into  it,  put  God  into  it.  To  make  a  point 
of  getting  "  into  the  spirit,"  of  realizing  that  every 
one  of  us  is  "  in  the  spirit  of  the  Lord,"  to  hear 
His  voice  as  of  a  trumpet  talking  with  us,  —  that  is 
the  intention  of  the  Christian  Sunday,  the  only  end 
of  its  observance,  the  only  cure  for  droning ;  and 
anything,  I  care  not  what,  that  accomplishes  that  for 
us  is  Sabbath-keeping,  and  whatsoever  hinders  tliis 
is  Sabbath-breaking.  To  rise  up  for  an  early  celebra- 
tion of  the  Holy  Communion,  and  then  spend  the 
subsequent  morning  hours  over  the  Sunday  news- 
paper, crammed  full  of  items  of  the  workaday  world, 
—  of  fashion  and  gossip  and  scandal,  of  politics  and 


188  SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE. 

trade,  of  mere  art  and  literature  and  aesthetics,  that 
are  as  God-forgetful  as  it  is  possible  to  be,  —  that  is 
not  to  be  "  in  the  spirit  on  the  Lord's  Day."  To  go 
to  church  at  eleven  o'clock  and  listen  to  a  sermon, 
and  then  on  the  way  home  to  drive  out  the  whole 
impression  of  it  by  sights  and  sounds  of  the  flesh  and 
the  devil ;  to  excuse  one's  self  altogether  from  church 
on  the  ground  that  Sunday  is  the  one  day  you  have 
to  devote  to  your  wife  and  children  and  friends,  and 
then,  instead  of  so  devoting  it  to  them  that  you  and 
they  are  lifted  into  a  purer  and  higher  and  kindlier 
atmosphere,  to  spend  it  in  making  it  harder  for  them 
than  ever  to  know  and  feel  that  love  is  of  God,  and 
earthly  fatherhood  a  shadow  of  the  Divine,  and  that 
no  home  on  earth  has  any  meaning  apart  from  our 
Heavenly  Home,  —  no,  my  brethren,  if  such  be  the 
way  that  we  spend  our  Sundays,  if  we  be  not  yet 
ready  for  the  Christian  Lord's  Day,  I  say  that  it 
would  be  better  for  us  to  go  back  and  be  Puritans 
once  more ;  to  be  shut  up  and  tied  down  to  the  stiff, 
forbidding  customs  which  it  is  our  boast  that  we 
have  outlived ;  to  have  God  thrust  on  us  as  a  con- 
suming fire,  and  religion  as  a  stern  taskmaster;  to 
have  the  line  between  the  church  and  the  world,  be- 
tween heaven  and  hell,  drawn  sharp  and  strong,  so 
that  we  shall  never  ignore  and  never  forget  that 
there  is  a  difference  between  them  ;  to  have  it  graven 
on  our  souls  as  with  a  pen  of  iron  that  "  it  is  a  ter- 
rible thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  God,"  and  that 


SUNDAY   OBSERVANCK  189 

for  wicked  men  it  is  easy  enough  to  slip  into  hell, 
but  impossible  to  slip  into  heaven ;  that  "'  from  the 
days  of  John  the  Baptist  until  now  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  sufFereth  violence,  and  the  violent  take  it  by 
force. "  I  appeal  to-day  for  the  necessity  that  we  who 
call  ourselves  Christians  should  exert  our  wills  and 
apply  the  whole  force  of  our  minds  to  keep  the 
Lord's  Day  holy.  I  do  not  desire  to  see  the  old  un- 
lovely days  of  Puritanism  brought  back  again  ;  but  I 
I  do  desire  that  the  loveliness  of  true  Christianity 
should  be  recognized  as  something  which,  like  all 
else  that  is  comely  and  of  good  report,  requires  a 
decided  effort  either  to  gain  or  keep.  Have  you  not 
known,  you  busy  men  of  the  market  and  the  courts 
of  justice,  — have  you  not  known  what  it  is  to  have 
a  case  that  required,  if  you  were  to  succeed  with  it, 
to  be  really  mastered  ?  Have  you  not  known  what 
it  is  to  go  to  your  upper  chamber  and  shut  your 
door,  and  forbid  yourself  to  callers,  nay,  even  to  your 
own  household  ;  to  lay  your  papers  before  you  on 
your  desk,  and  close  your  ears  to  every  sound,  your 
eyes  to  every  sight,  and  just  to  ponder  with  yourself 
all  alone  and  steadily  the  matter  before  you  until  you 
had  saturated  your  mind  with  it,  —  yes,  and  not  even 
to  stop  there,  but  when  you  have  gotten  your  mind 
full  of  your  subject,  to  go  about  with  it  and  croon  over 
it  for  hours,  until  all  that  you  know  and  all  that  you 
have  experienced  in  your  previous  life  and  profession 
seems  to  be  brought  to  bear  on  it,  flooding  it  with 


190  SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE. 

new  meaning,  until  at  last  you  have  been  able,  as  we 
say,  "  to  look  at  your  subject  all  round  "  ?  Well,  if 
it  is  by  such  efforts  and  such  seclusion  alone  that  we 
are  able  to  master  our  more  important  matters  of 
earthly  business,  do  you  think  it  likely  that  we  shall 
fare  more  easily  with  the  serious  matters  of  our  eter- 
nal life  ?  Do  you  fancy  that  you  can  be  "  in  the 
Spirit,"  as  John  of  Patmos  was,  on  the  Lord's  Day 
or  any  other  day,  without  careful  determination  to 
do  so  ?  If  this  world  is  too  much  with  you  even 
for  you  to  prosper  in  your  worldly  business  unless 
you  take  pains  to  shut  out  the  world  at  times,  do 
you  suppose  that  our  heavenly  business  can  be  con- 
ducted without  at  least  equal  restrictions  ?  No,  my 
brethren,  believe  me,  if  once  we  come  really  to  love 
our  God,  really  to  prize  and  venerate  the  spiritual 
side  of  our  being,  really  to  recognize  what  even  art 
and  literature  and  poetry  imply  in  the  way  of  ab- 
sorption and  devotion  on  the  part  of  those  who  cul- 
tivate them  ;  if  once  we  perceive  that  none  of  life's 
flowers  can  be  rudely  handled  or  rudely  neglected  if 
we  would  keep  them  sweet  and  unfading,  and  least  of 
all  our  religion  ;  if  once  we  accept  the  Bible  statement 
that  "  he  that  cometh  to  God  must  believe  that  He 
is,  and  that  He  is  a  rewarder  of  them  that  diligently 
seek  Him,"  — then  we  shall  admit  that  how  we  are 
to  observe  our  Sundays  is  a  matter  of  the  greatest 
delicacy  and  care  and  conscientiousness.  I  am  not 
bespeaking  for  the  Lord's  Day  aught  too  much  of 


SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE.  191 

the  old-time  narrowness.  Let  the  day  be  a  very  natu- 
ral, —  a  truly  homely  day,  a  day  that  the  youngest 
child  can  look  upon  with  pleasure,  a  day  that  will 
reveal  to  both  parent  and  child  the  exquisite,  the  in- 
finite possibilities  of  home.  I  am  not  asking  you 
necessarily  even  to  come  always  twice  or  tlirice  to 
church  ;  I  am  not  asking  you  to  be  handling  all  day 
long  manuals  of  devotion ;  I  am  no  friend  of  too 
many  "  good  books,"  as  they  are  called.  But  what- 
ever you  read,  and  whatever  you  do,  at  least  beware 
one  day  in  seven  of  triviality,  of  superficiality,  of  the 
slightest  breath  of  impurity  ;  let  there  be  one  day  in 
the  week  when  you  and  yours  will  make  this  com- 
mon effort :  that  "  whatsoever  things  are  true,  whatso- 
ever things  are  pure,  wliatsoever  things  are  lovely, 
whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report,"  you  will  think 
on  these  tilings,  and  let  the  rest  alone.  The  house 
where  other  things  are  mentioned,  on  the  Lord's  Day 
you  will  not  visit  it ;  the  book  where  other  things 
are  discoursed  of,  on  the  Lord's  Day  you  will  not 
open  it ;  the  man  or  woman  whose  company  is  sug- 
gestive of  other  things,  on  the  Lord's  Day  you  will 
avoid  them.  You  will  go  nowhere,  you  will  read 
and  hear  nothing,  you  will  consort  with  no  com- 
panions, that  would  make  you  shudder  to  remember 
that  brief  word  of  the  Psalmist :  "  Thou  God  seest 
nie."  History,  the  better  poetry,  the  more  earnest 
science,  the  more  serious  statesmanship,  —  to  con- 
sider these  things  as  part  of  your  contemplations  is 


192  SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE. 

entirely  compatible  with  such  an  endeavor ;  for  "  the 
earth  is  the  Lord's,  and  the  fulness  thereof"  But 
beware  of  all  that  would  seem  to  persuade  you  that 
the  earth  is  the  devil's  or  man's.  People  who  know 
what  friendship  is  know  that  it  must  be  cultivated ; 
that  if  you  are  to  give  aught  of  yourself  to  your 
friend,  or  get  aught  out  of  your  friend,  you  must 
take  time  for  him  and  pains.  Intimacy  is  the  very 
condition  of  friendship,  —  community  of  thought  and 
feeling.  And  can  we  hope  to  have  God  for  our 
Friend  on  any  other  terms  ?  Can  we  hope  really  to 
know  God,  to  love  and  understand  Him,  to  gain 
some  insight  into  His  ways,  if  we  spend  no  time 
with  Him  ?  It  is  often  remarked  nowadays  that  it 
requires  a  great  deal  of  effort  in  our  distracted  and 
overcrowded  modern  life  to  keep  up  one's  friend- 
ships. So  it  does.  And  think  you  that  it  requires 
less  effort  to  keep  up  one's  friendship  with  God  ? 
That  is  what  the  true  Christian  sets  apart  Sunday 
for,  —  to  keep  up  his  intimacy  with  God.  There  is 
nothing  awkward  or  strained  about  it,  or  artificial. 
There  is  no  sudden  break  or  jar  in  one's  life  be- 
cause of  it.  This  is  the  very  prerogative  of  friend- 
ship that  it  makes  no  jar.  No  matter  what  you 
are  doing,  if  your  real  friend  rings  your  door- 
bell, you  welcome  him  and  take  him  in ;  you  do 
not  change  your  life  for  him ;  you  take  him  right 
into  your  life,  and  tell  him  to  make  himself  at 
home.     All   that  you   are   doing  and   thinking  and 


SUNDAY   OBSERVANCE.  193 

striving  for,  -r-  your  little  anxieties  and  great,  your 
small  and  larger  joys,  —  you  take  liini  into  them, 
and  talk  them  all  over  with  him,  and  he  throws  light 
on  them.  You  show  yourself  up  to  your  friend,  and 
trust  your  real  self  to  him,  and  the  inspiration  of  his 
sympathy  sweetens  and  strengthens  you  just  as  you 
are,  just  where  you  are.  It  is  for  the  stranger  that 
you  wear  a  mask  and  put  your  house  in  order  and 
don  fine  clothes,  not  for  your  friend.  And  the  idea 
of  the  Christian  Sunday  is  that  to  take  God  into  our 
ordinary  life  will  likewise  cause  no  break  in  it ;  that 
to  be  "  in  the  Spirit  on  the  Lord's  Day  "  will  be  to 
receive  into  our  common  daily  being  One  who  will 
enter  into  it  as  no  one  else  can.  You  do  not  undo 
your  life,  or  wrap  it  up  in  falsehood,  or  stiflfen  it  un- 
naturally by  taking  God  into  it ;  rather  God  brings 
truth  into  your  life,  order  and  genuine  simplicity ;  for 
God  is  the  Reality  of  things.  The  great  scientists 
come  to  us  in  these  days  and  tell  us  how  matter 
really  is,  in  spite  of  its  appearances  ;  and  God  comes 
to  us  and  tells  us  how  man  really  is,  how  the  whole 
universe  is,  in  spite  of  the  appearance.  You  hear  a 
great  voice,  as  of  a  trumpet,  saying  within  you,  "  I 
am  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  First  and  the  Last."  All 
that  you  are  and  that  your  home  is  ;  all  that  your 
mind  is  busied  with,  that  your  ambitions  are  plan- 
ning, that  your  exertions  are  accomplishing  ;  all  your 
mistakes  and  failures ;  the  things  that  balk  and  the 
things  that  profit  you,  day  in  and  day  out  as  you  go 

13 


194  SUNDAY  OBSERVANCE. 

forth  to  your  work  and  to  your  labor  until  the  even- 
ing, —  on  the  Lord's  Day  God  calls  on  you,  and  you 
take  Him  into  these,  and  make  yourself  at  home  with 
Him.  All  your  secular  work  throws  light  on  God, 
and  He  throws  new  light  on  it,  puts  new  meaning 
into  it,  —  helps  you  to  discern  the  temporary  and  to 
grasp  the  eternal  in  it ;  that  is  all.  It  is  as  when 
God  came  unto  Abram  in  a  vision  and  said  unto 
him,  "  Fear  not,  Abram,  I  am  thy  shield,  and  thy 
exceeding  great  reward." 


XV. 

THE    SEAEED   CONSCIENCE.^ 

Now  the  Spirit  speaketh  expressly,  that  in  the  latter  times 
some  shall  depart  from  the  faith,  .  .  .  having  their  con- 
science seared  with  a  hot  iron.  —  1  Timothy  iv.  1,  2. 

THE  two  Bible  lessons  of  this  morning's  service,'^ 
taken  together,  are  a  practical  appeal  to  the 
hnnian  conscience  as  a  witness  to  the  Providence 
of  God,  and  as  a  justification  of  that  Providence. 
Conscience  is  hereby  made  the  clue  for  human  think- 
ing, as  also  for  human  action.  Now,  no  one  can 
study  the  career  and  character  of  Saint  Paul  without 
perceiving  that  he  was  a  peculiarly  conscientious  per- 
son, —  that  in  his  whole  life  as  a  man  of  action  and  as 
a  man  of  thought  conscience  was  the  predominating 
motive.  With  many  good  men  it  is  not  so  ;  in  them 
conscience  simply  goes  along  with  other  motives  and 
supports  them ;  it  follows,  but  does  not  lead.  In 
their  lives  it  is  the  intellectual  motive,  or  the  motive 
of  the  affections,  that  predominates.  Their  ideas  and 
actions  are  due  in  the  first  instance  to  their  reason, 
or  to  their  heart.     They  lead  their  life  because  they 

^  Lenten  Sermon. 

2  Preached  on  the  second  Sunday  in  Lent,  March  2,  1890. 


196  THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE. 

love  it,  or  bectause  they  first  have  thought  it  out  so, 
and  afterwards  have  found  that  their  conscience  did 
not  forbid  it.  Conscience  was  there  to  restrain  or 
to  permit,  but  it  was  not  foremost  to  guide  and  to 
suggest.  In  Saint  Paul's  case,  however,  conscience 
was  foremost  always.  Read  together  his  epistles 
and  the  account  of  his  life  as  given  in  the  Book  of 
the  Acts,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  that  his  views  of  truth 
and  his  course  of  action  from  first  to  last  w^ere  due 
primarily  to  what  his  conscience  dictated.  When  he 
assisted  those  who  stoned  Stephen,  his  consenting  to 
that  martyrdom  was  because  his  conscience,  only 
half  educated  as  yet,  bade  him  to  do  so.  When  on 
the  way  to  Damascus  he  met  his  Saviour  and  was 
converted,  his  first  steps  as  Christ's  disciple  were 
taken  because  his  conscience  smote  him.  And  the 
whole  question  of  the  mutual  relations  of  Christian 
Jews  and  Christian  Gentiles  to  the  older  Jewish  law 
—  which  was  the  great  question  of  his  ministry,  and 
which  he  did  more  to  settle  than  all  the  other 
apostles  —  was  essentially  a  case  of  conscience,  as 
his  own  argument  in  the  eighth  chapter  of  the  First 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians  proves.  And  if  any  one 
desires  to  see  what  a  difference  it  makes  in  the  whole 
tone  even  of  one's  abstract  thinking  whether  pure 
reason  or  conscience  be  the  impelling  and  paramount 
factor  in  the  mental  process,  let  him  read  througli 
Saint  Paul's  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  Here  we  have 
a  theme  of  the  profoundest  theology,  touching  the 


THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE.  197 

whole  past  moral  history  and  intellectual  history  of 
the  human  race.  The  argument  and  the  conclusion 
are  rational  throughout ;  but  it  is  perfectly  plain  that 
the  first  and  final  motive-power  that  actuated  the 
writer  in  choosing  this  theme,  and  in  dealing  with  it 
when  chosen,  was  a  conscientious  motive ;  and  no 
one  can  study  thoughtfully  this  letter  to  the  Romans 
without  observing  what  marvellous  power  this  faculty 
of  the  soul,  —  this  practical  sense  of  right  and  wrong, 
which  is  tlie  very  voice  of  God  in  man,  —  what  power 
it  has  to  contribute  to  man's  more  abstract  knowl- 
edge ;  how,  in  proportion  as  it  is  pure  and  well- 
disciplined,  conscience  helps  the  reason  to  discrim- 
inate and  appropriate  truths  of  whatever  kind ;  and 
how  it  disposes  the  mind  to  listen  to  one  eternal 
message  ratlier  than  to  another ;  and  how  each  new 
truth  thus  accepted  from  witliout,  in  proportion  as  it 
is  made  the  subject  of  thorough  religious  contempla- 
tion and  action,  elicits  from  within  the  soul  a  respon- 
sive harmony  which  completes  the  evidence  for  that 
truth. 

Hence  we  can  easily  understand  how  shocked 
Saint  Paul  was  when  he  came  across  men  in  his 
ministry  for  whom  conscience  had  no  voice  at  all  in 
their  ideas  and  impressions  of  truth.  The  keen 
metaphor  into  which  he  throws  his  thought  shows 
of  itself  how  deeply  Saint  Paul  was  pained.  "  Hav- 
ing their  conscience  seared  with  a  hot  iron,"  he  says. 
Have  you  ever  seen  wlint  a  red-hot  iron  will  do  to 


198  THE   SEARED  CONSCIENCE. 

the  flesh  of  living  man,  —  how  it  changes  the  whole 
character  of  that  flesh,  making  it  stiff"  and  hard  and 
insensible  and  ugly  ?  The  flesh  is  there  still,  but  its 
quality  is  altered  ;  not  only  is  its  beauty  gone,  but  its 
use  is  gone  ;  the  functions  of  the  body,  the  healthy 
action  of  blood  and  tissues,  the  sensitiveness  to  out- 
Avard  touch  or  inward  volition,  no  longer  operate 
there.  If  it  be  not  renewed  and  reformed,  tlie  flesh 
that  is  seared  might  almost  as  well  be  dead  ;  and 
what  the  seared  flesh  is  to  the  animal  life  of  man  that, 
in  Saint  Paul's  view,  the  seared  conscience  is  to  his 
soul-life.  Man's  faculties  of  knowledge,  of  affection, 
of  aspiration  can  no  more  operate  naturally  and 
rightly  than  his  will  can  if  his  conscience  becomes  in- 
active. Hence  as  Saint  Paul  went  about  his  ministry 
to  liuman  souls,  seeking  to  bring  home  to  them  the 
grace  and  power  of  the  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ,  it 
pained  him  inexpressibly  to  find  among  his  hearers 
persons  whose  souls  were  in  this  state.  Here  was 
an  absolute  obstacle  to  his  success  with  them.  The 
truth  he  brought  to  them  could  not  touch  them,  could 
not  really  affect  them,  could  not  get  into  them,  so 
long  as  they  continued  so.  He  and  his  fellow-worker 
Timothy  must  first  address  themselves  to  curing  the 
scar,  to  removing  and  making  once  more  sensitive  the 
deadened  surface  of  the  unbeliever's  conscience,  be- 
fore proceeding  to  their  higher  task  of  revealing  the 
gospel  of  the  Crucified. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  sufficiently  appreciate  how 


THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE.  199 

much  the  state  of  our  conscience  has  to  do  with  the 
state  of  our  faith  as  Christians.  I  do  not  think  that 
we  are  aware  how  much  both  the  processes  of  our 
thought  and  the  results  of  our  thinking,  both  the 
manner  of  our  affections  and  the  outcome  of  them, 
depend  upon  this  single  condition  :  whether  all  along 
in  our  thinking  and  in  our  loving  we  have  kept  our 
conscience  tender. 

Let  us,  tlien,  consider  first  the  effect  of  a  tender 
conscience  upon  one's  thinking,  —  upon  the  sort  [of 
thinking  that  you  and  I  are  most  likely  to  engage  in 
as  we  live  in  the  world  of  to-day.  Everybody  is 
more  or  less  of  a  philosopher,  and  in  our  generation 
more  than  ever  before.  The  spread  of  education  to 
all  classes,  the  facility  with  which  the  thought  of  the 
few  gets  current  among  the  many,  disposes  us  to 
philosophize,  if  not  profoundly,  at  least  superficially. 
The  air  is  full  of  the  criticism  of  human  life.  The 
very  newspapers  and  reviews  that  we  skim  through 
morning  by  morning  have  a  column  for  crude  sug- 
gestions as  to  the  philosophy  of  life.  Now,  there  are 
two  ways  of  confronting  this  state  of  things,  the  con- 
scientious and  the  unconscientious.  The  unconscien- 
tious man  does  his  thinking  about  life  with  little 
regard  to  actual  living ;  he  looks  on  at  life  as  a  spec- 
tator, not  as  an  actor ;  he  fancies  that  merely  to  know 
about  life  is  an  end  in  itself ;  the  personality  of  man, 
as  it  passes  to  and  fro  before  him,  is  a  machine  whose 
work  he  watches,  or  a  plant  whose  growth  he  at- 


200  THE    SEARED   CONSCIENCE. 

tends.  The  history  of  the  past,  the  transactions  of 
the  present,  are  an  interesting  spectacle  to  him.  He 
observes  the  development  of  customs  and  institu- 
tions and  ideas,  their  combinations,  the  play  and 
counterplay  of  other  peoples  conscience  and  emotions 
and  reasonings  and  actions,  as  if  humanity  were  a 
species  of  mere  vegetation.  If  the  process  goes  on 
quietly  and  steadily,  he  thinks  it  dull ;  if  there  are 
crises  of  energy  and  disaster,  he  thinks  it  exciting,  — 
like  a  good  play  seen  from  a  comfortable  seat  in  a 
respectable  theatre  ;  he  has  no  feeling  for  the  prac- 
tical consequences  of  what  is  going  forward.  But 
the  conscientious  thinker,  —  neither  the  energies  of 
passion  nor  the  refinements  of  thought  nor  the  mi- 
rage of  art  and  beauty  nor  the  complications  of 
action  in  society  content  or  occupy  liim  in  and  for 
themselves.  Each  and  all  of  them  are  pregnant  with 
results,  —  with  results  that  touch  his  own  person  and 
the  person  of  his  brothers  in  the  world.  Of  these 
transactions  the  conscientious  man  perceives  the  inevi- 
table to-morrow,  —  the  good  faith  kept  or  violated, 
the  purity  maintained  or  lost,  the  influences  of  ex- 
ample that  reach  so  subtly  and  so  far  in  this  world  of 
accountable  wills.  This  spectacle  of  human  action 
and  passion  is  not  simply  a  spectacle  ;  it  is  a  spec- 
tacle in  which  we  take  part ;  it  is  an  image  of  what 
we  ourselves  are  doing  and  becoming  ;  and  it  shows 
what  sort  of  an  example  we  are  setting  to  others. 
Ah,  to  look  at  this  scene  of  life  is  more  than  mere 


THE  SEARED  CONSCIENCE.  201 

looking  ;  it  is  to  feel,  to  be  drawn,  to  be  impelled  ; 
there  is  practical  suggestion  in  it.  Among  the  on- 
lookers there  are  even  now  personal  beings  in  temp- 
tation to  whom  this  spectacle  will  operate  either  as 
a  warning  or  as  an  allurement ;  there  are  sufferers 
whose  wounds  will  receive  from  it  either  balm  or 
poison ;  there  are  toilers  to  whose  weariness  it  will 
bring  either  discouragement  or  consolation.  Life  is 
not  simply  beautiful  or  hideous,  dull  or  interesting ; 
life  is  life.  It  is  a  question  of  living,  not  of  seeing 
merely ;  and  in  this  living  not  one  of  us  can  shirk  his 
part.  We  may  or  may  not  have  time  to  contemplate 
things  ;  but  in  any  case  at  every  moment  we  are  act- 
ing; we  must  act.  Our  actions  modify  the  spec- 
tacle, and  therein  lies  our  strict  responsibility.  The 
seared  conscience  is  impervious  to  responsibility ; 
but  the  man  whose  conscience  is  not  seared,  —  who 
listens  to  the  categorical  imperative  of  duty  uttered 
steadily  in  his  soul,  uttered  absolutely,  witli  no  ap- 
peal, subordinate  to  nothing,  —  this  man  recognizes 
that  every  phase  of  life  is  also  an  instance  of  re- 
sponsible action,  and  that  every  action,  implicitly 
or  explicitly,  is  a  profession  of  faith  or  of  unfaith 
in  God,  and  a  matter  of  obedience  or  else  of  dis- 
obedience to  God.  To  look  at  life  as  a  mere  ob- 
server, and  for  purposes  of  criticism  alone,  is  to 
separate  knowledge  from  duty.  But  in  conscience 
man's  knowledge  of  God  is  inseparably  bound  up 
with  his  duty  to  God.     To  see  or  to  know  anything 


202  THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE. 

of  life  carries  with  it  a  command  to  act  and  to  be 
according  to  what  we  know  ;  and  this  not  for  the 
sake  of  our  knowledge,  but  for  the  sake  of  God, 
whose  we  are,  and  whom  we  serve. 

And  this  leads  us  directly  to  another  effect  of  con- 
science upon  the  mind  of  man.  Conscience  does  not 
only  temper  man's  knowledge  with  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal obligation  to  act,  making  knowledge  in  all 
cases  a  part  of  life  and  amenable  to  life  ;  conscience 
also  gives  steadiness  and  tranquillity  to  the  mind 
itself  in  acquiring  Avhat  it  knows.  To  realize  God 
with  humility  always  steadies  the  mind,  and  through 
conscience  we  do  realize  God.  The  conscientious 
person  is  well  aware  that  the  thing  in  all  this  world 
of  being,  next  to  our  own  personality,  which  we 
know  first  and  longest  and  closest,  is  that  strange, 
imperative,  inner  voice  that  bids  "  Thou  shalt,"  or 
"  Thou  shalt  not,"  when  we  turn  to  the  right  hand 
or  when  we  turn  to  the  left.  So  soon  as  ever  reason 
and  experience  had  trained  men's  eyes  and  hands  to 
discriminate  duly  between  appearance  and  reality  in 
the  things  we  see,  conscience  was  there  to  guide ; 
and  this  guidance  of  conscience  was  always  recognized 
as  God's  guidance.  Thus  our  very  first  notions  of 
reality  are  fastened  to  God.  Every  attempt  to  explain 
conscience  as  the  voice  of  men  to  man  has  ended  in 
self-contradiction.  Every  attempt  to  explain  away 
conscience  had  fared  no  better  than  the  similar  efforts 
to  explain  away  free-will.     My  soul  still  knows  / 


THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE.  203 

ought,  even  as  it  knows  /  can.  And  this  voice  of 
duty  at  every  period  of  history  has  been  recognized 
as  a  voice  from  the  eternal  world,  —  from  where, 
beyond  these  earthly  voices,  there  is  peace.  This 
knowledge  of  what  we  ought  to  be  here  is  knowledge 
of  what  God  is  there,  —  a  knowledge,  first,  that  if 
we  are,  God  is ;  and  secondly,  that  God  is  a  rewarder 
of  them  that  diligently  seek  Him.  It  is  a  knowledge 
keener  and  stronger  than  our  knowledge  of  things 
outside  us,  or  of  men  outside  us,  because  it  is  a 
knowledge  of  God  within  us,  —  a  bond  that  binds  us 
to  the  eternal  Person  who  is  to  human  persons  at 
once  a  Lawgiver  and  an  Inspirer.  Tt  is  a  misrepre- 
sentation to  say  that  the  uneasiness  of  him  who  dis- 
obeys his  conscience  is  the  simple  fear  of  punishment, 
whether  human  or  divine ;  rather  it  is  the  intense 
anguish  of  the  soul  that  feels  that  it  has  wilfully 
broken  with  its  only  real  Support,  and  with  One  who 
knows  it  better  and  loves  it  better  than  all  else  in 
the  universe.  If  there  be  any  such  thing  as  human 
knowledge  of  anything  whatsoever,  or  any  such  thing 
as  human  certainty,  then  this  is  the  certainty  of  all 
certainties,  and  the  first  factor  in  all  our  knowledge. 
The  very  root  element  in  our  sense  of  the  permanence 
of  anything  is  our  sense  of  God's  permanence  that 
belongs  to  us  in  conscience.  There  speaks  the  o\\6 
■'  T  Am."  Is  it  not  easy,  then,  to  see  how  the  con- 
scientious man  is  fortified  in  his  efforts  to  acquire 
and  to  master  some  knowledge  of  the  things  of  earth 


204  THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE. 

and  time  ?  how  frail  and  fitful  must  be  his  thinking 
whose  conscience  is  seared  ?  Have  you  not  noticed 
the  bewilderment  and  exhaustion  —  the  feeling  that 
life  is  hardly  worth  thinking,  any  more  than  it  is 
worth  living  —  in  the  critics  and  philosophers  of  our 
day  who  have  let  slip  their  faith  in  God?  The  first 
feature  of  modern  literature  and  knowledge  is  the 
vastness  of  it,  its  multiplicity,  its  infinity  of  details. 
We  are  doomed  to  be  specialists  if  we  would  not  be 
superficial ;  and  every  specialist  is  superficial  except 
in  his  own  domain  ;  and  even  his  own  domain  touches 
and  crosses  so  many  other  departments  of  investiga- 
tion that  he  cannot  be  sure  of  all  the  bearings  even 
of  what  he  knows.  Do  you  remember  Albrecht 
Diirer's  grand  engraving.  Melancholia  ?  A  robust 
woman,^  full  of  intellectual  and  vital  force,  sits 
drearily  in  the  midst  of  the  implements  of  knowledge. 
She  broods,  with  her  chin  resting  on  her  right  hand. 
Books  and  scrolls  and  scientific  instruments  are 
strewn  around,  and  in  her  left  hand  she  holds  a  com- 
pass. It  is  plain  that  that  resolute  genius  is  melan- 
choly neither  from  weakness  of  body  nor  vacancy  of 
mind.  She  sees  the  avenues  to  all  there  is  to  know. 
She  is  strong  and  she  is  learned.  But  though  the 
plumes  of  her  wings  are  mighty,  she  sits  moodily, 
pondering  amidst  the  tools  of  suspended  labor  on  the 
shore  of  a  silent  sea.     Is  it  not  the  portrait  of  too 

^  This  illustration  is  taken  from  P.  G.  Hamerton's  "  Intellectual 

Life." 


THE   SEABED   CONSCIENCE.  205 

much  of  our  modern  culture,  that  is  overtasked  by 
the  mass  and  the  variety  of  the  materials  of  knowl- 
edge, and  has  lost  the  clue  to  them?  But  the* con- 
scientious thinker  can  never  lose  his  clue.  However 
the  objects  of  knowledge  multiply,  he  always  falls 
back  on  this  primal  sense  of  God,  the  Beginning  and 
the  End  of  all  things.  He  is  familiar  with  intellec- 
tual suspense,  but  not  with  intellectual  doubt,  for  his 
conscience  has  given  God  to  him  as  the  basis  of  all 
knowledge  and  the  Giver  of  it.  Nothing  external 
can  shock  or  gainsay  that  direct  sense  of  God's  Being 
within  the  personal  soul.  Over  against  its  ideas  and 
emotions  and  experience,  and  all  information  from 
without,  the  human  thinker  confronts  in  his  own  in- 
most being  the  Divine  Reality  that  underlies  him 
and  all  things,  —  which  all  things  presuppose.  True 
to  conscience,  the  thinker  perceives  that  each  phase 
of  truth,  inward  or  outward,  is  but  an  aspect  of  the 
nearness  of  the  Almighty,  the  echo  of  His  Voice,  the 
history  of  His  operations,  the  prophecy  of  His  pur- 
pose. "  All  things  are  from  Him  and  to  Him,  and 
by  Him  all  things  consist."  This  is  the  conscientious 
thinker's  point  of  view  ;  and  hence  no  facts  of  science 
or  of  history  or  of  personal  experience  can  daunt 
him  ;  for  facts  are  the  expression  of  God  s  Providence  ; 
but  human  inferences  from  facts  are  to  the  conscien- 
tious thinker  invariably  false  if  they  seem  to  lead 
away  from  God.  God  has  given  him  all  he  knows, 
together  with  his  faculty  for  knowing;  and  so   he 


206  THE   SEARED   CONSCIENCE. 

goes  on  learning  all  that  lie  can  so  long  as  he  can  ; 
not  asking  for  more  light  upon  his  knowledge  than 
God  now  vouchsafes  to  shed  ;  confident  that  all  the 
roads  of  human  learning  lead  straight  to  God,  if  only 
we  had  time  to  follow  them  out,  and  waiting  in 
strong  humility  for  the  call  to  that  higher  sphere  of 
being  where  we  shall  know  even  as  also  we  are 
known. 

I  had  intended  to  dwell  also  on  the  effect  of  con- 
scientiousness upon  the  life  of  the  affections,  but  I 
have  scarcely  time.  Just  as  the  lively  conscience 
will  modify  all  man's  thinking,  giving  to  it  on  the 
one  hand  tranquillity  and  firnniess,  and  on  the  other 
hand  attaching  to  all  thought  the  sense  of  action,  of 
consequences,  of  personal  responsibility  for  life ;  so 
also  it  will  purify  and  steady  that  side  of  man's  rela- 
tions with  his  fellows  which  we  vaguely  call  man's 
heart.  Oh,  how  rare  is  a  conscientious  life  of  the 
affections !  Take  one  instance,  and  the  capital  one, 
the  life  of  man  and  wife.  Other  relations  of  life  are 
more  or  less  invaded  by  the  laws  and  the  scrutiny  of 
society  and  the  state  ;  but,  so  long  as  they  keep  clear 
of  positive  crime,  in  all  their  most  intimate  relations 
man  and  wife  are  left  to  themselves.  A  man's  home 
is  his  castle.  Love,  like  death,  is  beyond  the  pale  of 
social  conventions.  There  they  are  then,  these  two, 
male  and  female,  face  to  face  for  better  or  worse. 
Sooner  or  later  they  will  reveal  each  to  the  other,  in 
spite  of  themselves,  the  very  depths  of  their  being 


THE   SEAEED  CONSCIENCE.  207 

and  character,  and  the  crises  that  they  pass  through 
will  show  up  the  roots  of  their  souls.  Behind  the 
four  walls  of  that  home  will  be  transacted  infamies 
that  no  human  law  can  reach,  or  heroisms  that  no 
human  honors  can  glorify.  There  will  arise  between 
these  two  souls  opportunities  of  self-indulgence  or  of 
self-control  which  no  wills  but  their  will  shall  ever 
modify  ;  and  cases  of  conscience  which  none  but  the 
Spirit  of  God  Himself  can  rightly  solve.  Ah,  what 
misery  then,  if  the'ir  consciences  are  seared !  if  they 
have  deadened  the  faculty  whereby  the  Pure  and 
Holy  One  could  speak  to  them  !  For  though  the 
hours  pass,  and  the  years  go  by,  and  death  may  break 
their  bond,  for  what  they  two  have  done  together 
during  those  same  fleeting  years  they  will  have  to 
stand  for  judgment  at  the  eternal  bar  of  right  and 
wrong. 

God  help  us  all,  my  brothers,  to  keep  our  con- 
science tender  and  alive.  As  we  do  these  little  deeds, 
and  think  these  little  thoughts,  that  seem  to  us  such 
trifles,  —  such  petty  failures  to  obey  the  still,  small 
voice  within,  —  let  us  henceforth  remember  that  we 
are  thereby  insensibly  deadening  and  damaging  our 
most  precious  faculty  of  all,  —  conscience,  the  faculty 
whose  failure  to  operate  renders  our  thinking  wrong, 
our  actions  bad,  and  our  affiections  ruinous  to  us  and 
to  those  we  love. 


XVI. 

CHEIST'S    VERDICT    ON    HIS    OWN^ 
SUFFERINGS-^ 

Then  opened  He  their  understanding'  .  .  .  and  said 
unto  them  ...  it  behoved  Chi-ist  to  suifer.  —  St.  Luke, 
xxiv.  46. 

TO-DAY  is  Passion  Sunday.  By  to-day's  Epis- 
tle the  Prayer  Book  begins  to  draw  our 
attention  especially  to  the  approaching  anniversary 
of  Christ's  sufferings  and  death.  And  here  in  our 
text  is  our  Saviour's  verdict,  after  His  resurrection, 
on  all  His  sufferings  that  had  gone  before.  Observe 
that  it  is  Christ's  own  verdict,  —  not  what  some 
apostle  or  friend  or  distant  onlooker  said  of  them, 
but  what  He  Himself  said.  The  opinions  of  those 
who  observe  the  sufferings  of  another  may  be  valu- 
able for  the  purposes  of  history,  of  medicine,  of 
scientific  psychology ;  but  from  the  standpoint  of 
individual  morality  they  are  of  little  worth.  When 
we  speak  of  the  secrets  of  the  single  soul,  — ■  of  that 
mysterious  inward  history  that  no  human  outsider 
can  unveil, —  what  man  knoweth  the  things  of  a  man 
save  the  spirit  of  man  that  is  in  him  ?     Who  would 

^  Passion  Sunday  sermon. 


CHRIST'S   VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS.     209 

dare  to  measure  the  balances  of  advantage  and  dis- 
advantage, in  the  case  even  of  his  best  known 
brother  and  say  certainly  that  in  any  given  crises  of 
his  soul-life,  it  is  well  for  him  to  be  suffering  what 
he  does  ?  "  Every  man  shall  bear  his  own  burden." 
But  in  the  passage  of  our  text  we  have  Christ's  own 
verdict  on  His  own  sufferings.  After  He  had  lived 
and  died  and  risen  again,  this  is  His  confidential 
commentary  on  all  that  Ho  had  undergone. 

It  was  Easter  night,  and  ten  of  the  disciples  were 
sitting  together  with  closed  doors  for  fear  of  the 
Jews.  The  two  who  had  seen  Jesus  on  the  way  to 
Em  mans  had  just  come  back  to  tell  the  glad  news ; 
and  as  the  disciples  sat  there  discussing  their  strange 
story,  Jesus  Himself  stood  in  the  midst  of  them, 
and  said,  "  Peace  be  unto  you."  But  they  were  af- 
frighted, and  supposed  that  they  had  seen  a  spirit. 
So  He  asked  them,  "  Why  do  anxious  thoughts  arise 
in  you  hearts  ?  Handle  me  and  see  that  it  is  I  My- 
self. And  while  yet  they  believed  not  for  joy  and 
wonder,  He  said  unto  them,  Have  ye  here  any  meat  ? 
And  they  gave  Him  a  piece  of  a  broiled  fish  and  of 
an  honeycomb,  and  He  took  it,  and  did  eat  before 
them.  Then  opened  He  their  understanding,  and 
said  unto  them,  Thus  it  is  written,  and  thus  it  be- 
hoved Christ  to  suffer,  and  to  rise  from  the  dead." 
Out  of  the  calm  and  comfort  of  His  eternal  resurrec- 
tion life  this  is  Christ's  message  to  all  those  who 
have  the  fellowship  of  His  sufferings. 

14 


210     CHRIST'S  VERDICT  ON  HIS  SUFFERINGS. 

Have  you  ever  tried,  my  brethren,  to  make  that 
message  a  real  one  to  yourselves  ?  Have  you  ever 
sought  to  make  vivid  to  yourselves,  so  far  as  the 
human  mind  is  able,  what  Christ's  sufferings  were,  — 
not  sentimentally  and  fantastically,  but  plainly  and 
truly  according  to  the  simple  narrative  of  the  Gos- 
pels ?  Devout  people  often  say  that  Jesus  Christ 
seems  far  away  to  them  ;  that  while  God  our  Father 
is  a  reality  to  their  souls,  Christ  our  Saviour  is  vague, 

—  that  they  cannot  bring  Him  close  to  them,  and 
feel  that  He  makes  any  practical  difference  in  their 
daily  life.     They  can  live  with  God  the  Father  daily, 

—  can  pray  to  Him,  and  think  of  Him,  and  lean  on 
Him  ;  but  Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour,  though  they  be- 
lieve that  He  did  redeem  them  centuries  ago,  seems 
hardly  to  touch  their  present  life,  —  nothing  seems 
to  bring  together  them  and  Him.  But  how  can  we 
expect  that  Christ  will  seem  a  reality  to  us,  if  we 
do  not  so  much  as  try  to  "apprehend  what  the  Gos- 
pels state  definitely  about  Him,  nor  realize  how  ac- 
curately His  earthly  life  was  parallel  to  ours  ?  Let 
us  then  endeavor  this  morning,  in  one  particular  at 
any  rate,  to  retrieve  ourselves  as  to  this  matter ;  let 
us  try  to  bring  out  sharply  to  our  historic  imagina- 
tion the  downright  facts  as  to  what  He  suffered,  as 
they  are  told  so  briefly  and  yet  so  eloquently  in  the 
New  Testament  histories  ;  let  us  see  how  strangely 
and  yet  how  truly  the  things  He  suffered  were  like 
what  average  men  and  women  still  suffer  from  day 
to  day. 


CHRIST'S  VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS.      211 

To  begin  with,  our  Lord  was  poor.  This,  as  a 
general  fact,  often  passes  through  our  minds ;  but  let 
us  make  the  fact  definite  ;  let  us  see  how  Christ  was 
poor.  There  is  liardly  a  country  in  the  world  that 
has  altered  so  little  as  Palestine.  If  you  go  through 
Galilee  to-day  you  see  things  pretty  much  as  they 
were  when  Jesus  lived  there.  The  country  is  the 
same ;  the  occupations  are  the  same  ;  the  houses  are 
the  same ;  the  very  style  of  living  is  similar,  —  nay, 
in  many  cases  you  can  actually  put  your  hand  on  the 
stone  walls  of  some  ancient  building,  recently  exca- 
vated, and  say  :  "  That  house  was  tliere,  and  looked 
even  so,  when  Jesus  of  Nazareth  passed  by."  Jesus 
was  a  carpenter  in  some  small  house  of  that  small 
village  of  the  most  despised  province  of  a  conquered 
land.  When  people  wished  to  prejudice  Him  in 
men's  eyes,  to  brand  Him  with  opprobrium,  they 
styled  Jesus  a  Nazarene.  "  Can  any  good  thing 
come  out  of  Nazareth  ?  '  they  would  say.  Thus  for 
thirty  years,  from  babyhood  to  manhood,  in  a  low 
stone  house,  with  no  windows,  and  lighted  only  by 
one  door,  probably  with  but  one  room  serving  at 
once  for  shop,  kitchen,  and  bedroom,  Jesus  Christ 
lived  and  labored  at  His  trade.  I  do  not  say  that  at 
that  time  He  was  pinched  for  bread.  Food  comes 
easily  in  that  climate,  and  physical  wants  are  simple. 
Our  Lord  doubtless  earned  His  living,  as  His  foster- 
father  Joseph  had  before  Him.  It  came  by  the 
sweat  of  His  brow ;  it  cost  Him  trouble,  and  made 


212     CHRIST'S   VERDICT  ON  HIS   SUFFERINGS. 

Him  constantly  tired  ;  but  it  came  honorably,  and 
without  begging,  and  was  sufficient  for  His  low  es- 
tate. He  was  never  on  the  lowest  round  of  the 
social  scale ;  He  was  simply  poor.  The  suffering 
that  poverty  caused  Him  was  not  so  much  the  suffer- 
ing of  privation  as  the  suffering  of  being  despised. 
Poverty  hindered  His  teaching,  stood  in  the  way  of 
His  wonderful  power  of  example,  deprived  Him  of 
prestige ;  for  among  the  Jews,  no  less  than  among 
the  Romans  of  those  days,  to  be  poor  was  to  be  con- 
temptible. The  distinguished  Pharisees,  the  rich 
Sadducees,  educated  at  great  cost,  were  all  agreed 
that  it  was  absurd  to  look  for  instruction,  in  religion 
or  in  morals,  to  a  man  of  low  extraction  and  mean 
surroundings.  "  Is  not  this  the  carpenter  ?  Whence 
hath  this  man  wisdom?  Out  of  Galilee  ariseth  no 
prophet ! "  they  exclaimed.  Thus  our  Saviour  was 
always  under  social  disabilities.  Look  into  your 
hearts,  my  brothers  ;  recall  the  twinges  of  offended 
pride,  the  heart-burnings  of  balked  ambition,  and  the 
nobler  yearnings  to  break  down  the  barriers  that 
hamper  your  usefulness,  and  tell  me  now  that  you 
can  find  nothing  in  the  Christ-life  that  brings  it  close 
to  yours ;  tell  me,  above  all,  whether  there  is  not  the 
ring  of  real,  downright,  every-day  experience  in  the 
Master's  words  when  out  of  the  richness  of  His  own 
soul-life  He  began  His  Sermon  on  the  Mount  with 
this  saying,  "  Blessed  are  the  meek." 

I  have  said  that  in  His  opening  years  Jesus'  lot 


CHRIST'S  VERDICT  ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS.     213 

was  not  one  of  complete  deprivation  or  extreme 
physical  pain.  That  experience  came  later  on,  in  His 
passion  and  crucifixion.  In  the  two  and  a  half  years 
of  His  final  ministry  as  a  teacher,  He  tested  this  trial 
likewise.  Hunger,  thirst,  sleeplessness,  nervous  ex- 
haustion, the  sharpest  bodily  pain,  —  all  these  His 
crucifixion  brought  to  Him.  Indeed  the  record  of 
His  passion  would  seem  to  indicate  that  He  was 
never  physically  as  strong  as  most  men.  He  fainted 
under  the  burden  of  the  cross,  but  the  other  prisoners 
did  not  faint.  He  died  so  much  quicker  than  was 
usual  that  when  the  soldiers  came,  according  to 
custom,  to  break  His  legs  and  put  an  end  to  His  tor- 
ture, they  found  Him  dead  already.  And  some 
months  previous,  when  persons  were  over-eager  to 
become  His  disciples  and  He  wished  to  test  their 
earnestness.  He  gave  incidental  testimony  to  the  daily 
hardships  of  His  ministry  by  saying,  "  Foxes  have 
holes,  and  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests ;  but  the 
Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to  lay  His  head."  Have 
you  ever  been  uncertain  of  your  home  ?  seen  it  broken 
up  by  financial  ruin,  or  physical  ill-health,  or  death  ? 
Has  that  bitter  adjective  "  homeless  "  applied  to  you  ? 
It  matters  little  how  trying  a  man's  life  may  be  in 
other  respects,  if  only  he  have  a  good  and  happy 
home.  There  is  one  place  at  whose  door  all  burdens 
are  laid  down,  all  disappointments  lightened,  and  the 
fretted  heart  is  cheered.  Love  and  trust  and  self- 
respect   and   fellowship   are  very  medicines  for  the 


214     CHRIST'S  VERDICT  ON  HIS  SUFFERINGS. 

mind  diseased  and  the  soul  that  is  sorry.  But  from 
the  day  that  He  began  His  Ministry  our  Saviour  had 
no  home.  Yet  there  is  other  testimony,  equally  inci- 
dental and  even  more  significant.  Thus  at  the  time 
of  his  conversation  with  the  woman  of  Samaria  it  is 
mentioned  by  Saint  John  that  He  was  wearied  with 
His  journey  and  sat  on  the  well  to  rest ;  but  the  dis- 
ciples who  had  journeyed  with  Him  were  not  weary, 
—  they  went  away  directly  unto  the  city  to  buy  meat. 
And  by  and  by  at  Jerusalem,  when  He  was  arguing 
with  the  unbelieving  Pharisees,  they  suddenly  ex- 
claimed contemptuously :  "  Thou  art  not  yet  fifty 
years  old,  and  hast  Thou  seen  Abraham  ? "  Have 
you  ever  appreciated  what  a  hint  we  have  here  of  our 
Lord's  personal  appearance  at  tliat  time  ?  "  Not  yet 
fifty  years  old  ! "  In  fact  He  was  not  yet  thirty ;  and 
how  wasted  and  infirm  He  nmst  have  looked,  for 
them  in  their  scornful  guesses  to  have  added  twenty 
years  to  the  days  of  the  years  of  His  pilgrimage! 
There  are  souls  that  fairly  consume  the  bodies  that 
they  occupy.  Keen  mental  conflict,  high  moral 
earnestness,  disinterested  self-devotion  to  mankind, 
are  wont  to  make  ravages  upon  this  tenement  of  flesh. 
So  was  it  with  Jesus  Christ. 

Again,  our  Lord's  isolation  was  not  merely  that  of 
the  afl*ections  ;  it  was  intellectual  and  moral.  Many 
a  man  finds  his  mission  in  the  world  comprehended 
by  his  fellows,  even  though  he  himself  may  not  be  so. 
But  in  Christ's  case  men  misunderstood  His  mission 


CHRIST'S  VERDICT  ON  HIS  SUFFERINGS.      215 

quite  as  much  as  they  misunderstood  Him.  From 
the  first  the  rulers  misinterpreted  Him  ;  and  although 
the  common  people  heard  Him  gladly  so  long  as  He 
simply  cured  their  bodies  and  soothed  their  earthly 
sorrows,  they  quickly  turned  against  Him  when  He 
insisted  on  the  eternal  matters  of  the  soul.  Then  not 
even  His  brethren  believed  on  Him.  They  would 
have  accepted  a  throne  for  Him  and  for  themselves, 
but  they  would  not  bear  the  cross.  And  with  the 
chosen  and  more  faithful  Twelve,  even  up  to  the  very 
hour  of  His  death,  He  had  to  say,  "  I  have  yet  many 
things  to  say  unto  you,  but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now." 
"  Have  I  been  so  long  time  with  you,  and  yet  hast  thou 
not  known  Me,  Philip  ? "  I  have  read  of  great  philan- 
thropists who  could  find  no  one  to  organize  their 
schemes  ;  of  great  generals  who  lacked  assistants  ;  of 
inventors  who  died  before  they  could  adequately  dis- 
close their  secret.  I  have  known  of  parents  who 
passed  away  feeling  that  they  were  powerless  to 
secure  possible  advantages  for  their  children  because 
the  children  would  not  grasp  their  views.  I  have 
known  men  of  culture  and  large  ideas  living  among 
others  whose  njinds  were  dull  and  whose  hearts  were 
narrow.  But  the  mental  and  moral  loneliness  of 
Jesus  Christ  was  greater,  keener,  still.  Once  more, 
our  Saviour  "  suffered  being  tempted  ;  "  and  until  we 
realize  this  we  shall  never  feel  close  to  Him.  Temp- 
tation is  the  deepest  mystery  of  human  soul-life. 
That  awful  law  of  oppoi'tunity,  whereby  the  soul  that 


216      CHRIST'S  VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS. 

is  meant  for  God  meets  a  force  that  draws  that  soul 
away  from  God,  and,  if  only  the  soul  be  willing,  draws 
it  successfully ;  that  singular  variety  of  character 
whereby  what  is  one  man's  food  is  to  another  poison  ; 
that  terrific  drama  which,  as  enacted  among  us  sin- 
ners, is  but  too  accurately  described  by  Saint  Paul 
when  he  says,  in  the  seventh  chapter  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans,  "  I  am  carnal,  sold  under  sin.  For 
what  I  would,  that  I  do  not ;  but  what  I  hate,  that  I 
do.  For  I  delight  in  the  law  of  God  after  the  inward 
man  ;  but  I  see  another  law  in  my  members,  warring 
against  the  law  of  my  mind,  and  bringing  me  into 
captivity  to  the  law  of  sin,"  —  this  ineffable  fact  of 
temptation  is  the  deepest  mystery  of  the  soul ;  and  to 
the  man  whose  conscience  is  keen  it  is  also  the 
sharpest  of  all  suffering.  There  are  moments  in  every 
noble  soul-life  when  no  physical  pain,  no  grief  of  the 
affections  can  be  compared  to  the  simple  misery  of 
being  tempted,  —  when  a  man  would  gladly  cut  off 
his  right  hand,  or  put  out  his  right  eye,  if  only  he 
could  escape  that  crisis,  foreseen  but  unavoidable, 
when  the  old  sin  that  so  easily  besets  him  will  again 
be  present  to  liis  choice.  All  this,  even  this,  Christ 
also  experienced.  Holy  Scripture  says  expressly  that 
He  was  in  all  points  tempted  like  as  we  are,  though 
without  sin.  Unlike  us,  His  will  never  flinched.  He 
never  once  chose  the  evil.  But  He  was  tried  just  as 
thoroughly  as  we  are,  and  "He  suffered  being 
tempted."     He  conquered  the  temptation,  but  there 


CHRIST'S  VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS.      217 

was  an  amount  of  anguish  involved  in  that  conquest 
which  Gethsemane  itself  can  but  suggest  to  us. 

My  brothers,  I  have  not  been  dwelling  on  these 
things  merely  to  call  out  your  sympathy.  In  such 
matters  mere  sympathy,  mere  sentimental  apprecia- 
tion, is  dangerous  to  the  soul.  But  it  is  not  danger- 
ous, it  is  very  helpful,  after  we  have  thus  realized 
how  easily  Christ's  life  comes  home  to  our  lives  in  all 
the  materials  of  sorrow,  to  listen  to  His  own  verdict 
on  such  sufferings  after  that  He  had  outlived  them 
forever.  "  Then  opened  He  their  understanding  .  .  . 
and  said  unto  them  ...  it  behoved  Me  to  suffer." 
Who  would  not  wish  to  have  been  present  on  that 
memorable  evening,  and  to  have  heard  the  full  con- 
versation of  which  our  text  is  but  the  briefest  record  ? 
to  have  heard  how  the  risen  Jesus  ascertained  in  the 
higher  world  that  it  was  a  good  thing  for  Him  to 
have  suffered,  —  that  in  God's  presence  all  sorrow 
turns  to  joy?  And  yet  I  doubt  if  we  have  really 
missed  much  that  would  be  valuable  here.  I  fancy 
that  as  each  and  every  soul  must  bear  its  own  burden 
of  suffering,  so  a  stranger  doth  not  intermeddle  with 
the  joy  into  which  hereafter  the  sorrow  is  found  to 
turn.  It  is  a  personal  experience  which  all  may 
duplicate,  but  Avhich  none  can  anticipate  or  share. 
Here,  if  anywhere  in  the  Christian  life,  is  the  sphere 
of  faith.  We  can  look  on  while  others  suffer ;  we 
can  hear  them  say,  and  can  accept  their  saying,  that 
they  find  such  sufferings  a  good  thing  in  the  end ; 


218      CHRIST'S   VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS. 

but  their  sufferings  are  not  ours,  nor  ever  can  be. 
The  essential  quality  of  suffering  is  tliat  it  is  personal, 
—  that  it  is  my  pain,  and  not  another's.  And  when 
the  inviolable  soul  is  caught  in  the  throes  of  any  such 
personal  distress,  it  requires  nothing  less  than  per- 
sonal faith  to  bear  the  present  pain  in  confidence  of 
future  welfare.  Such  faith  is  the  substance  of  things 
hoped  for,  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen  ;  it  is  a 
strong  and  trustful  leap  in  the  dark.  If  it  were  not 
for  this  darkness,  faith  would  not  be  faith ;  and  the 
difficulty  of  it,  the  tremendous  strain  which  it  puts 
on  the  moral  fibre  of  even  the  best  of  men  is  suffi- 
ciently attested  in  the  Gospel  story  of  the  three 
hours'  darkness  w  lien  Christ  was  on  the  cross,  —  of 
the  yearning,  piercing  cry  that  burst  from  Him : 
"  My  God,  My  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  Me  ? " 
When  it  was  all  over,  and  in  persistent  trust  He  had 
yielded  up  His  broken  spirit  into  His  Father's  hands, 
and  passed  behind  the  veil  to  "  where  beyond  these 
voices  there  is  peace,"  —  where  in  the  clear,  calm 
light  of  God's  eternal  truth  and  righteousness  "  we 
shall  see  even  as  also  we  are  seen,"  —  then  Christ 
could  come  back  to  earth  and  announce  to  His  dis- 
ciples that  it  behooved  Him  to  suffer ;  but  while  the 
trial  was  still  going  on  the  best  that  He  could  do  was 
to  say  resolutely,  "  Father,  into  Thy  hands  I  commend 
My  spirit."  It  was  an  act  of  faith,  and  thereby  of 
necessity  an  absolutely  personal  act,  — ■  an  act  which 
faithful  Christians,  copying  their  Holy  Master,  may 


CHRIST'S  VERDICT  ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS.      219 

duplicate,  but  cannot  share.  No  man  shall  ever  learn 
like  Jesus  that  his  sufferings  here  are  all  worth  while, 
until  he,  like  Jesus,  has  ceased  to  suffer  and  partaken 
of  the  resurrection  life. 

But  although  in  this  absolute  sense  our  Lord's 
words  on  this  matter  can  only  serve  as  an  encourage- 
ment to  our  indi^^dual  faith,  and  cannot  replace  the 
peculiar  certitude  that  will  come  to  us  from  actual 
experience  of  the  life  beyond  the  grave  ;  nevertheless 
there  is  a  sense  in  which,  as  we  study  the  general 
religious  history  of  mankind,  and  our  personal  reli- 
gious experience,  we  can  see,  even  while  we  are  still 
on  earth,  that  it  behooved  us  to  suffer.  For  what,  as 
a  matter  of  historic  fact,  has  been  the  persistent 
function  of  suffering  in  the  soul-life  of  this  world? 
Has  it  not  from  the  beginning  been  the  link,  surer 
than  all  others,  to  bind  the  soul  to  God ;  to  make  the 
soul  both  feel  and  recognize  the  need  of  God,  to  sigh 
and  hope  and  wait  for  and  believe  in  "  an  ampler 
ether,  a  diviner  air  "  than  earth  supjilies  to  us  ?  Mere 
theism  —  mere  belief  that  God  is,  and  that  He  is  a 
rewarder  of  them  that  diligently  seek  Him  —  would 
not  withstand  the  stress  of  this  world's  happiness  if 
it  were  wholly  happy.  We  should  be  so  contented 
with  the  world  and  with  ourselves  that  our  feith  in 
God,  and  our  consciousness  of  needing  Him,  would  be 
soothed  to  sleep.  Theism,  like  pure  oxygen,  is  the 
breath  of  life ;  but  by  us  sinners  it  may  not  be  breathed 
alone.    It  is  too  rare  and  fine  for  the  actual  conditions 


220     CHRIST'S   VERDICT   ON   HIS   SUFFERINGS. 

of  tins  workaday  world.  But  suffering,  in  Christ's  view 
of  it,  supplies  the  lacking  element  to  the  atmosphere 
that  human  souls  must  breathe.  No  faithful  soul  can 
take  it  in  without  being  aware  of  new  motives,  higher 
aspirations,  —  of  yearnings  that  nought  earthly  can 
satisfy.  It  was  under  the  stress  of  suft'ering  and 
sorrow  that  the  saint  cried  out  of  old :  "  0  amare, 
O  ire,  O  ad  Deum  parvenire"  "  Like  as  the  hart 
desireth  the  waterbrooks,  so  longeth  my  soul  after 
Thee,  O  (j!od.  My  soul  is  athirst  for  God,  yea  even 
for  the  living  God :  when  shall  I  come  to  appear 
before  the  presence  of  God  ? "  Suffering  takes  the 
very  materials  of  earth  and  transforms  them  into 
prophecies  of  heaven.  It  is  God's  perpetual  protest 
against  materialism.  It  vindicates  the  great  truth 
that  underlies  all  really  rational  philosophy,  that  the 
vast  mechanism  of  tlie  universe  implies  something 
beyond  itself;  that  it  exists  for  the  realization  of 
moral  worth,  —  worth  in  character  and  conduct,  — 
not  simply-  for  physical  satisfaction,  or  even  for 
mental  and  spiritual  satisfaction.  Suffering  makes 
the  note  of  human  living  and  human  soul-power,  self- 
devotion,  not  self-satisfaction.  When  Saint  Paul,  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  is  speaking  of  the  Incar- 
nation of  Jesus  Christ,  he  says  that  "though  He 
were  a  Son,  yet  learned  He  obedience  by  the  things 
which  He  suftered."  Oh,  my  brothers,  do  not  our 
hearts  tell  us  that  in  all  this  world  it  is  never  really 
well  with  us  except  when  we  are  obeying  God  ?  and 


CHRIST'S   VERDICT  ON   HIS  SUFFERINGS.      221 

that  if  we  had  not  known  what  it  is  to  suffer,  we 
should  never  have  quite  known  what  it  is  to  obey  ? 
Here  then,  perhaps,  we  have  an  intimation  of  what 
in  heaven  we  shall  know  ;  that  every  trial  we  under- 
went here,  every  grief  and  difficulty  and  anguish  was 
absolutely  necessary  if  ever  we  were  to  learn  to  bow 
down  our  souls  and  obey  our  Father  which  is  in 
heaven ;  and  then  we  shall  see  what  now,  alas !  at 
times  we  can  only  believe,  —  that  even  such  entire 
obedience  of  the  creature  to  the  Creator,  of  the  child 
to  the  Father,  is  the  very  bliss  of  being,  the  essential 
joy  of  the  soul.  And  then  we  shall  say,  as  Jesus 
said,  that  "  it  behoved  us  to  suft'er,  and  to  rise  from 
the  dead." 


XVII. 

HUMAN    LIFE    UNREASONABLE    UNLESS 
IMMORTAL.  1 

Now  is  Chx'ist  risen  from  the  dead,  and  become  the  first- 
fruits  of  them  that  slept.  —  1  Cor.  xv.  20. 

TN  husbandry  everything  centres  on  the  first-fruits 
of  the  field.  They  are  the  justification  of  all  the 
previous  labor,  and  the  promise  of  the  full  harvest 
that  is  to  be.  So  the  liusbandman  looks  for  them 
intently,  builds  all  his  hopes  on  tliem,  and  takes  great 
pride  in  them.  He  holds  them  up  to  all  men's  gaze 
in  triumph,  as  a  specimen  of  liis  pains  and  a  presage 
of  his  profits.  Hereon  hangs  the  significance  of  the 
sacrifice  of  the  first-fruits  to  the  Lord  Jehovah  in  the 
Old  Testament  ritual,  as  ordained  in  the  twenty-third 
chapter  of  Leviticus.  The  Israelite  would  not  offer 
unto  his  God  of  that  which  cost  him  nothing  ;  and 
of  all  his  offerings  there  was  none  more  precious  or 
more  prayerful  than  this  one.  The  Israelites  were  a 
race  of  husbandmen,  and  all  their  yearnings  for  pros- 
perity and  peace,  the  whole  outcome  of  their  energy 
and  life,  were  typified  and  focalized  in  this  annual 
ceremony,  when  from  far  and  near  the  farmers  gath- 

1  Easter  sermon. 


LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     223 

ered,  and  offered  to  the  priests  the  first-fruits  of  their 
land.  "And  the  Lord  spake  unto  Moses,  saying, 
Speak  unto  the  children  of  Israel,  and  say  unto  them, 
When  ye  be  come  into  the  land  which  I  give  unto  ye, 
and  shall  reap  the  harvest  thereof,  then  ye  shall  bring 
a  sheaf  of  the  first-fruits  of  your  harvest  unto  the 
priests :  and  ye  shall  wave  the  sheaf  before  the  Lord, 
to  be  accepted  for  you.  .  .  .  And  ye  shall  eat  neither 
bread,  nor  parched  corn,  nor  green  ears,  until  the 
self-same  day  that  ye  have  brought  an  offering  unto 
your  God  :  it  shall  be  a  statute  forever  throughout 
your  generations  in  all  your  dwellings."  It  was  to 
this  scene  of  joyful  sacrifice,  and  to  all  the  feelings 
which  in  it  found  expression,  that  Saint  Paul  was 
alluding  in  his  effort  to  describe  the  practical  signifi- 
cance of  the  resurrection  of  our  Lord,  —  to  indicate 
what  Christ  is  to  the  Christians  who  believe  in  Him. 
And  just  as  from  summer  to  summer  the  first  fruits 
of  the  year  are  equally  important  to  those  that  have 
toiled  for  them,  so  each  generati(fn  of  Christians  have 
equal  reason  to  take  home  to  their  own  selves  the 
significance  of  Christ's  resurrection.  As  each  seed- 
time and  each  harvest  has  its  own  peculiar  difficulties 
and  discouragements  and  hopes,  so  also  each  genera- 
tion of  liuman  souls  has  its  peculiar  temptations  and 
its  need  of  special  cheer.  "  The  heart  knoweth  its 
own  bitterness,  and  a  stranger  intermeddleth  not 
therewith."  And  therefore  Easter  after  Easter  for 
eighteen  centuries  Christians  throusfhout  the  world 


224     LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL. 

have  gathered  to  comraemorate  this  their  feast  of  the 
first-fruits,  and  to  reiterate  their  expressions  of  what 
this  resurrection  of  Jesus  means  to  them  and  for 
them.  When  the  Saviour  was  talking  to  His  disci- 
ples the  night  before  He  died,  He  said  to  thein, 
"  Because  I  live,  ye  shall  live  also."  They  did  not 
understand  Him  then.  But  after  He  was  dead  and 
risen  again  and  ascended  into  heaven,  His  apostle 
Paul  was  able  to  offer  this  commentary  on  that  earlier 
saying  of  his  Master :  "  Now  is  Christ  risen  from  the 
dead,  and  become  the  first-fruits  of  them  that  slept ; " 
that  is,  Christ  died,  as  all  of  us  must  die ;  and  as  He 
rose  again,  so  shall  we  all.  Christ  the  first-fruits; 
afterwards  they  that  are  Christ's  at  His  coming. 

Do  we  not  need  that  message  to-day,  my  friends, 
quite  as  much  as  men  needed  it  of  yore  ?  Have  not 
our  modern  investigations  and  discoveries  in  science 
and  history,  and  in  the  comparison  of  the  religions 
of  the  world,  raised  up  for  us  new  problems,  or 
rather  new  expressions  of  the  same  old  problem 
that  Saint  Paul  was  facing  —  the  mystery  of  death  ? 
Are  we  not  hearing  and  reading  constantly  the 
theories  of  philosophers  and  moralists  who  have 
lost  this  faith  in  a  personal  hereafter,  and  who  pre- 
tend to  us  that  that  faith  is  not  really  necessary  for 
the  welfare  and  progress  of  mankind  ?  And  are 
not  we  obliged,  even  as  the  Corinthians  of  old,  to 
sift  these  theories  and  to  test  these  would-be  explana- 
tions of  our  life,  so  as  to  see  whether  they  are  ade- 


LIFE    UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     225 

quate  to  the  occasion  ?  Ah,  this  is  a  matter  which 
cannot  be  shirked,  —  an  inquiry  which  each  thinking 
soul  must  consider  for  himself;  for  if  there  be  any 
matter  on  earth  which  concerns  us  personally,  singly, 
and  all  alone,  it  is  this  of  one's  individual  resurrec- 
tion, because,  as  Pascal  said  grimly,  "  I  shall  die 
alone."  And  if  there  be  sound  rational  grounds  why 
we  Christians  can  say,  and  must  say,  that  the  risen 
Jesus  is  simply  the  first-fruits  of  ourselves,  the  har- 
binger and  the  sample  of  our  own  immortality,  then 
shall  we  not  bring  to  our  Easter  festival  a  keener 
feeling  and  a  profounder  intention  than  belonged 
even  to  the  Jewish  festivities  over  the  first-fruits  of 
their  fields?  Will  not  the  joy  of  our  harvest  be 
greater  than  theirs  ? 

My  theme  to-day,  then,  is  this  :  that  human  life  is 
unreasonable,  if  earthly  life  be  all  of  it,  —  that  per- 
sonal, human  life  is  unreasonable  if  not  immortal. 
The  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ  is  indeed  a  question 
of  history,  and  must  be  dealt  with  as  we  deal  with 
matters  of  historic  fact.  Nor  need  we  be  afraid  to 
deal  with  it  on  that  platform.  Physiologists  and 
sociologists  come  to  us  nowadays  with  what  they 
insist  are  positive  evidences  of  the  ancient  condition 
and  the  historic  development  of  the  races  of  man- 
kind. I  am  not  prepared  to  question  their  evidences, 
but  this  I  will  say  :  that  if  these  be  historic  evidences 
which  can  pass  muster  at  the  bar  of  rational  proba- 
bility, the  evidence  for  the  actual  resurrection  of  Jesus 

15 


226     LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL. 

Christ  is  indefinitely  greater,  is  by  comparison  simply 
overwhelming.  Nay,  to  leave  questions  of  the  more 
ancient  history  and  to  come  to  modern,  I  say  that  if 
on  gromids  of  historic  evidence  we  have  any  security 
tliat  Ceesar  Augustus  or  Pontius  Pilate  lived,  we  have 
vastly  more  security  that  Jesus  Christ  both  lived  and 
rose  again.  For  human  history  is  a  matter  of  docu- 
ments and  manuscripts,  of  monuments  and  institu- 
tions ;  and  there  is  actually  to-day  more  extant 
evidence  of  that  kind  open  to  scholars  and  antiqua- 
rians in  favor  of  the  Gospel  story  of  the  life  and 
death  and  resurrection  of  the  Man  Christ  Jesus  than 
exists  for  the  accredited  history  of  any  of  Christ's 
contemporaries.  If  only  you  could  and  would  inves- 
tigate this  plain  question  of  historic  evidence  you 
would  see  this  for  yourselves. 

But  historic  evidence,  like  all  other  kinds  of  evi- 
dence, is  only  evidence  to  those  who  have  eyes  to  see  ; 
and  the  reason  why  so  many  persons  think  that  they 
are  absolutely  sure,  say  of  the  career  of  Julius  Caesar, 
while  they  are  by  no  means  sure  of  that  of  Jesus 
Christ,  is  that  when  they  come  to  the  latter  question 
there  are  scales  over  their  eyes.  First  they  think, 
and  rightly  so,  that  the  question  of  Christianity  is 
not  merely  a  matter  of  history,  but  also  of  philosophy 
and  of  religion,  not  perceiving  that  there  is  philosophy, 
and  religion  too,  behind  their  faith  in  Ca3sar ;  and 
next  they  fancy  that  there  are  a  priori  reasons  which 
render  any  and  all  evidence  for  the  Gospel  story  of 


LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     227 

Jesus  extremely  improbable.     "When  they  hear  of 
the  resurrection  of  the  dead,  some  mock :  and  others 
say,  We  will  hear  thee  again  of  this  matter."     Now, 
when  a  person  tells  me,  as  Mr.  Huxley  does  in  one 
of  his  latest  books,  that  man  is  an  automaton  and  no 
more,  then  I  can  easily  understand  that  he  should 
think  there  is  a  jjriori  evidence  against  the  resurrec- 
tion of  Christ,  —  though  I  cannot  think  Mr.  Huxley 
quite  ingenuous  about  it ;  for  if  he  and  I  are  auto- 
mata, what  does  any  argument  of  his  amount  to  in 
itself,  or  what  likelihood  is  there  that  it  can  modify 
either  my  convictions  or  anybody's  else  ?     But  put- 
ting the  materialists  on  one  side  for  to-day,  and  speak- 
ing  rather  to  that  vast   majority   of  mankind  who 
believe   that   they  are    not   automata,    but    rational 
persons,  with  power  to  think  for  themselves  and  to 
act  for  themselves,  —  of  these   I   desire  to  '  inquire 
M^hether  it  cannot  be  shown  that,  so  far  from  there 
being  any  a  priori  grounds  against  the  resurrection 
of  Christ  and  the  immortality  of  man,  there  are  not 
a  priori  grounds  in  favor  of  these ;  whether  human 
life  itself  is  not  utterly  unreasonable  unless  it  be  also 
immortal,  —  unless,  that   is,  our   death  involve  our 
resurrection.      For   again    let   me    remind   you,    my 
friends,  that  in  our  day  we  shall  never  get  even  a 
hearing   for    the   historic    evidences   of  Christianity 
imtil  we  have  first  answered  this  previous  question  ; 
since   it  is  because  of  their   being  thus  previously 
prejudiced  against  all  evidence  for  the  future  per- 


228     LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL. 

soaal  existence  of  man  after  death,  that  many  persons 
in  our  day  are  induced  to  reject  the  overwhehning 
historic  evidences  of  our  Lord's  resurrection  from  the 
dead.  They  will  not  believe  that  Christ  is  our  first- 
fruits  from  the  dead  because  they  do  not  believe  that 
death  has  any  fruits  at  all. 

Men  and  brethren,  there  are  times  when  it  is  well 
to  scrutinize  human  life  in  parts  and  parcels,  and  to 
follow  the  single  traits  of  it  as  far  out  as  we  can. 
But  there  are  also  times  when  it  is  well  to  look  at 
life  as  a  whole,  and  this  is  certainly  one  of  these 
times ;  for  there  is  such  a  thing  as  being  unable  to  see 
the  forest  for  the  trees.  It  is  impossible  to  grasp  the 
ultimate  significance  of  our  life  unless,  beside  looking 
at  it  partially,  we  also  rise  up  and  regard  it  as  a 
whole.  And  it  is  speaking  of  human  life  on  this 
earth  as  an  historic  whole  that  I  claim  that  man's  life 
is  utterly  irrational,  if  the  earthly  life  be  all  of  it. 

1.  The  wider  our  view  of  the  relation  of  this  world 
to  the  universe  of  worlds,  the  keener  our  insight  into 
the  past  history  and  the  present  conditions  of  man- 
kind on  this  earth  taken  by  itself  alone,  so  much  the 
more  inevitable  is  our  conclusion  that  any  one  man, 
or  race  of  men,  is  comparatively  insignificant  here. 
Like  the  ripples  on  the  stream  they  vanish,  and  are 
no  more  seen.  "  Put  not  your  trust  in  princes  or  in 
any  son  of  man,  for  there  is  no  help  in  them.  For 
Avhen  the  breath  of  man  goeth  forth,  he  returneth  to 
his  earth,  and  then  all  his  thoughts  perish."     Such 


LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     229 

in  every  age  has  been  the  burden  of  thouglitful  re- 
flection, whether  in  prose  or  poetry  ;  and  all  our 
hearts  echo  it,  and  the  Bible  itself  justifies  it.  From 
the  standpoint  of  this  life  alone  there  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said.  Death,  if  it  be  the  end  of  the  individual 
personality,  does  not  only  defeat  it  there  and  then, 
but  it  depresses  the  individual  at  the  very  start,  robs 
his  heart  of  all  courage,  and  his  career  of  all  dignity. 
Man  is  no  better  than  the  beasts  ;  they  perish. 

2.  However,  there  are  some  in  our  day  who,  al- 
though sceptical  of  man's  immortality  as  an  individ- 
ual, claim,  notwitlistanding,  that  the  relation  of  the 
individual  man  to  the  whole  race  of  men  secui-cs, 
even  to  the  individual  that  is  bound  to  perish,  his 
consolation  and  his  dignity.  Before  he  goes  hence, 
and  is  no  more  seen,  the  individual,  it  is  urged, 
makes  his  indispensable  contribution  to  the  welfare 
of  the  whole  race  of  which  he  temporarily  is  a  part. 
Without  the  temporary  parts  the  continuous  whole 
could  not  be.  The  merest  insect,  whose  entire  vo- 
cation in  life  is  to  be  for  a  few  hours  a  living  group 
of  molecules,  and  to  eat  of  a  single  leaf,  and  there  to 
deposit  the  egg  of  a  future  progeny,  has  wrought  a 
work  that  shall  have  consequences  in  the  eternal 
order  of  this  world.  Much  more  the  individual  man, 
with  his  longer  life  and  higher  powers,  no  matter 
how  obscure  he  may  be,  is  playing  his  part  in  the 
lasting  life  of  collective  humanity.  The  individual 
passes  upon  earth,  but  the  race  endures. 


230     LIFE    UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL. 

Yes ;  but  does  the  human  race  itself  endure  ? 
This  doctrine,  which  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the 
so-called  Religion  of  Humanity,  sounds  well.  There 
is  a  ring  of  disinterested  courage  in  it  which  is  cer- 
tainly very  attractive.  But  the  doctrine  is  lacking  at 
one  point.  If  humanity  were  to  be  permanent  on 
earth,  then  there  might  be  ground  for  this  religion  of 
humanity ;  but  if  science  has  anything  whatever  to 
tell  us  that  is  sure,  this  certainly  is  the  surest :  that 
mankind  will  not  last  on  earth,  —  not  the  indi- 
vidual merely,  but  the  whole  human  race,  is  bound 
to  vanish.  The  material  conditions  towards  which 
this  earth  is  tending,  as  iTCon  succeeds  seon,  will  be 
such  that  human  life  cannot  survive  on  this  globe. 
The  heavens  and  the  earth  will  pass  away.  Here,  at 
any  rate,  science  and  the  Bible  are  agreed ;  and  so 
the  whole  basis  of  this  self-styled  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity disappears.  It  has  borrowed  its  note  of  gen- 
erous self-devotion  from  the  Religion  of  Jesus  Christ ; 
but  the  object  for  this  devotion  it  has  got  from  no- 
where, —  neither  from  Christ  nor  from  science.  It 
is  the  baseless  figment  of  a  dream. 

3.  Hence  it  is  that  human  life  is  seen  to  be  un- 
reasonable, if  this  earth  be  the  whole  of  it.  The 
stream  cannot  rise  higher  than  its  source.  Man  is. 
He  finds  himself  here  with  these  persistent  ideas  of 
eternal  activity,  and  eternal  duty,  and  eternal  self- 
devotion  and  love.  If  he  is,  they  are  ;  for  they  are 
part  of  him.     Man's  mind  repudiates  absurdity ;  and 


LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     231 

for  him  and  his  whole  race  .to  be  what  they  are  and 
to  feel  what  they  do  and  to  think  as  they  must,  and 
then  to  have  nothingness  and  annihilation  for  their 
end,  is  a  rational  absurdity.  This  ineradicable  idea 
of  eternal  activity  implies  without  argument  that  the 
being  who  has  it  is  to  be  eternally  active.  This  idea 
of  endless  self-devotion  implies  the  self  to  devote,  and 
the  object  to  which  to  be  devoted.  This  law  of  eternal 
right  involves  the  existence  of  God,  of  whose  right- 
eousness this  law  is  the  expression.^  Thus  human 
life,  as  we  know  it,  without  God  on  the  one  hand  and 
man's  immortality  by  God's  grace  on  the  other  be- 
comes unthinkable ;  it  would  signify  nothing ;  it 
could  not  be.     Man  here  and  now  is  rational ;  and 

1  As  this  volume  is  going  to  press  I  cliance  upon  the  following 
paragraph  in  Dr.  Momerie's  article  in  the  "  Fortnightly,"  entitled 
"  Religion  :  its  Future."  Dr.  Moiuerie  puts  well  and  clearly  much 
that  I  had  endeavored  to  express  above.  He  says:  "Reason  can 
only  grasp  what  is  reasonable.  You  cannot  explain  the  conduct  of 
a  fool ;  you  cannot  interpret  the  actions  of  a  lunatic.  They  are  con- 
tradictory, meaningless,  unintelligible.  Similarly,  if  nature  were  an 
irrational  system,  there  would  be  no  possibility  of  knowledge.  The 
interpretation  of  nature  consists  in  making  our  own  tlie  thoughts 
which  nature  implies.  Scientific  hypothesis  consists  in  guessing  at 
these  thoughts ;  scientific  verification  in  proving  that  we  have  guessed 
aright.  '  0  God,'  said  Kepler,  when  he  discovered  the  laws  of 
planetary  motion,  '  I  think  again  thy  thoughts  after  thee.*  There 
could  be  no  course  of  nature,  no  laws  of  sequence,  no  possibilit}'  of 
scientific  prediction,  in  a  senseless  play  of  atoms.  But  as  it  is,  we 
know  exactly  how  the  forces  of  nature  act,  and  how  they  will  continue 
to  act.  We  can  express  their  mode  of  working  in  the  most  precise 
mathematical  formulae.  Every  fresh  discover}^  in  science  reveals  anew 
the  order,  the  law,  the  system,  in  a  word  the  reason,  which  underlies 
material  phenomena.     And  reason  is  the  outcome  of  mind." 


232    LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS  IMMORTAL. 

therefore  he  instinctively  and  absolutely  repudiates 
absurdity;  and  therefore  he  finds  it  a  priori  prob- 
able, instead  of  improbable,  that  death  does  not 
dispose  of  hiiu ;  and  therefore,  further,  when  he 
confronts  the  historic  fact  of  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  from  the  dead,  he  is  already  prepared 
for  it.  He  looks  at  this  divine  Man,  Christ,  as 
simply  the  first-fruits  of  death.  Since  by  man 
came  death,  by  man  comes  also  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead ;  for  it  was  rationally  impossible  that  man 
should  be  permanently  holden  of  death.  When  Saint 
Peter  was  preaching  his  great  sermon  on  that  first 
Pentecostal  morning  he  was  appealing  to  the  invin- 
cible reason  of  mankind.  "  Ye  men  of  Nazareth, 
hear  these  words  :  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  a  Man  ap- 
proved of  God  among  you  by  miracles  and  wonders 
and  signs,  which  God  did  by  Him  in  the  midst  of 
you,  as  ye  yourselves  also  know  :  being  delivered  by 
the  determinate  counsel  and  foreknowledge  of  God, 
ye  have  taken,  and  by  wicked  hands  have  crucified 
and  slain  :  whom  God  hath  raised  up,  having  loosed 
the  pains  of  death  :  because  it  was  not  possible  that 
He  should  be  holden  of  it."  For  ages  upon  ages 
there  had  floated  before  the  mind  of  man,  in  his 
better  moments,  a  vision,  an  ideal,  of  perfection. 
Towards  that  ideal  the  better  energies  of  men  had 
tended ;  for  it  their  hearts  had  longed  ;  by  it  their 
own  conscience  had  been  educated  and  enlightened. 
Now  there  before  them  in  human  flesh,  that  they 


LITE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     233 

could  see  .aud  hear  and  handle,  that  high  ideal  had 
been  realized.  Christ  was  the  Perfect  Man  ;  and  to 
make  death  the  end  of  Him  would  be  to  make  hu- 
man life  absurd.  The  human  reason  refuses  to  sup- 
pose that  such  a  life  and  character  as  Christ's  could 
be  at  all  if  it  were  simply  a  fortuitous  concourse  of 
atoms  signifying  nothing  ;  for  "  perfect "  has  no  mean- 
ing unless  it  be  permanent.  If  goodness  is  not  abid- 
ing, is  not  eternal,  it  has  neither  use  nor  beauty  ;  if 
goodness  dies,  it  must  rise  again,  or  else  it  is  not 
good.  And  this  is  what  the  ignorant  masses  of 
mankind  perceive  full  well  ;  looking  around  and 
above  them,  these  masses  of  the  people  behold  the 
privileged  few  whose  fortune  it  is  to  possess  what 
the  masses  desire.  Christ  has  power  to  restrain  the 
masses  because  He  preaches  that  character  is  better 
than  earthly  possessions,  and  that  the  eternal  future 
belongs  to  good  character  alone.  But  if  you  tell 
these  people  that  there  is  no  future,  then  they  will 
naturally  conclude  that  good  character  is  not  worth 
while.  Some  few  of  the  noblest  among  them  you 
may  still  restrain  by  proclaiming  your  religion  of 
humanity,  • —  by  urging  them  to  deny  themselves  and 
toil  on  generously  for  the  welfore  of  the  race  that 
will  abide  when  they  have  ceased  to  be.  But  when 
the  facts  that  science  already  knows  have  reached 
the  masses,  —  when  they  hear  that  there  is  no  abid- 
ing future  here  even  for  humanity  as  a  race,  that  this 
face  of  earth  itself  is  going  to  vanish,  and  therewith 


234     LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL. 

all  mankind,  —  then  even  these  nobler  souls  among 
the  poor  will  declare  that  you  have  been  cheating 
them ;  that  you  have  stolen  one  of  the  motives  of 
Christianity  without  the  sanctions  of  it.  And  then 
all  barriers  of  civilization  will  be  broken,  and  with  a 
mad  rush  and  a  wild  hurrah  the  masses  will  seize 
your  coveted  possessions  to  glut  their  natural  pas- 
sions and  their  own  greed  of  gain,  saying  :  "  Give  us, 
O  fortunate  ones,  a  share  on  earth,  since  you  have 
robbed  us  of  our  share  in  heaven  ;  let  us,  too,  eat 
and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die."  If  Christianity 
be  not  rational,  then  Nihilism  alone  is  so. 

This  is  a  good  argument ;  but  it  is  not  quite  the 
best ;  it  is  a  trifle  selfish  and  temporizing.  The 
argument  in  terrorem  will  do  when  we  are  thinking 
of  general  society,  which  it  is  dangerous  to  upset. 
But  the  best  argument  of  all  for  our  faith  in  the 
resurrection  of  man  is  the  private  and  personal  one. 
In  any  fair  view  of  the  nature  of  man,  oiie's  life  and 
death  and  one's  hereafter  is  a  matter  of  one's  own. 
What  shall  a  man  give  in  exchange  for  his  soul  ?  So 
far  as  each  of  us  is  ultimately  concerned,  it  is  the 
being  and  behavior  of  each  one's  separate  soul  that 
alone  has  given  quality  to  the  life  that  we  have 
known.  Life  to  me  is  what  I  see  it  to  be  ;  it  is  for  me 
what  I  have  made  it.  This  is  what  renders  each  of  us 
responsible  for  his  life.  And  it  is  because  this  mind 
of  mine  is  so  constituted  that  it  cannot  unthink  it- 
self ;  it  is  because  this  soul  of  mine  feels  to  its  inmost 


LIFE   UNREASONABLE   UNLESS   IMMORTAL.     235 

core  that  its  innate  ideals  of  trutli  and  holiness  and 
happiness  with  God  are  realizable  for  the  very  reason 
that  they  are  thinkable,  —  it  is  for  this  reason  above 
all  that,  when  the  soul  is  confronted  with  Jesus 
Christ,  in  whom  these  ideals  are  realized,  we  greet 
this  risen  Saviour  as  the  first-fruits  of  ourselves. 

To  this  feast  of  the  first-fruits  we  are  invited  to-day. 
At  the  Lord's  Table  we  meet  the  risen  Lord  Himself. 
Come  let  us  adore  Him,  come  bow  at  His  feet ;  and 
as  we  kneel  there  let  us  have  faith  to  receive  of  Him 
the  life  which  He  off^Brs  to  us  all.  Christ  the  first- 
fruits  :  afterward  we  that  are  Christ's. 


XVIII. 

THE   EESURRECTION   A  FULFILMENT   OF 
MAN'S   NATURAL   DESIRE.^ 

These  all  died  in  faith,  not  having  received  the  promises, 
but  having  seen  them  afar  off,  and  were  persuaded  of  them, 
and  embraced  them,  and  confessed  that  they  were  strangers 
and  pilgrims  on  the  earth.  .  .  .  Now  they  desire  a  better 
country,  that  is,  an  heavenly :  wherefore  God  is  not  ashamed 
to  be  called  their  God :  for  He  hath  prepared  for  them  a 
city.  —  Hebrews  xi.  13,  16. 

OUR  Easter  service,  my  brethren,  is  no  time  for 
an  elaborate  sermon.  This  "  Day  of  Days  " 
is  an  occasion  to  Christians  of  entire  worship,  and  in 
particnlar  of  that  supreme  act  of  worship,  the  Holy 
Eucharist.  We  are  come  this  morning  to  God's 
altar,  to  partake  of  the  mystical  "  Food  of  Immor- 
tality ;  "  and  our  whole  being,  body,  mind,  and  soul, 
should  be  concentrated  on  that  holy  function.  We 
worship  Christ,  our  risen  Lord,  to-day  ;  and  for  us 
frail  creatures  true  worship  and  entire  is  always  diffi- 
cult. Even  if  the  spirit  be  willing,  the  flesh  is  weak. 
Let  no  moments  be  so  spent  now  as  to  weary  us 
for  our  proper  duty.     Let  no  topic  be  prepared  for 

^  Easter  sermon. 


THE  RESURRECTION.  237 

your  consideration  that  would  jar  with  our  Liturgy 
of  Easter  prayer  and  praise.  Rather  let  me  simply 
suggest  to  you  one  topic  of  meditation  that  is  strictly 
in  unison  with  this  service,  —  a  topic,  too,  which 
those  who  stumble  at  the  Church's  dogma  of  the 
resurrection,  and  who  therefore  find  themselves  indis- 
posed to  accept  their  privilege  of  Easter  communion, 
may  take  away  with  them  for  further  and  prayerful 
reflection  elsewhere. 

Oh  that  there  were  none  such  as  these !  that  we 
could  every  one  of  us  with  one  accord  kneel  and  par- 
take at  yonder  table  of  the  Heavenly  Food !  that 
there  might  be  no  sad  divisions  in  our  households 
between  those  who  do  and  those  who  do  not  eat  of 
the  Sacrament  of  Reconciliation !  that  fathers, 
mothers,  brothers,  sisters,  friends  might  all  go  up 
together  to  the  altar,  and  wait  together  for  the  bene- 
diction of  the  Lord!  that  those  who  in  their  resi- 
dences in  this  city  are  lonely  and  far  from  home, 
might  find  a  home,  and  feel  at  home,  in  this  House 
of  God,  this  sanctum  of  Christian  fellowship !  But 
as  it  is  not  so  ;  as  there  must  needs  be  this  outward 
separation  between  those  who  are  communicants  and 
those  who  are  not ;  and  as  this  is  but  the  outward 
and  physical  sign  of  a  spiritual  separation  which, 
however  sad  and  undesirable,  is  at  least  in  many  cases 
conscientious,  and  therefore  honorable  ;  and  as  these 
doubtings  and  hesitations  of  our  brethren  oftentimes 
affect  those  of  us  who  are  communicants,  casting  a 


238  THE   RESURRECTION. 

certain  cloud  of  intellectual  difficulty  over  our  own 
spiritual  insight,  —  let  me  endeavor  briefly  to  suggest 
a  topic  which  I  think  is  timely,  and  which  bears  wit- 
ness to  the  thorough  reasonableness  of  that  great 
dogma  of  the  Christian  creed  which  we  profess  to-day. 
The  great  desire  of  man  is  for  personal  immortality 
in  body  and  soul ;  and  in  the  fact  of  Christ's  resur- 
rection which  we  commemorate  to-day,  the  Christian 
finds  the  pledge  and  the  assurance  that  this  universal 
desire  of  mankind  will  be  t^atisfied ;  that  our  life  in 
the  world  to  come  will  be  a  transformed  continuation 
of  man's  complete  being  in  body  and  soul.  Now  in 
our  intellectual  attitude  while  sifting  the  evidence  for 
Christ's  resurrection  from  the  dead,  a  great  deal 
depends  on  whether  we  regard  that  resurrection  be- 
forehand as  likely  or  unlikely.  Men  of  science  are 
quite  familiar  with  this  supreme  importance  of  the 
attitude  of  the  investigator's  mind  towards  the  truth 
that  he  is  in  search  of.  If  the  observer  is  wide 
awake  ;  if  by  previous  reasoning  he  is  already  disposed 
to  accept  the  truth  he  is  in  search  of,  then  he  is  in- 
stinctively alive  to  subtile  indications  of  it  that  will 
inevitably  escape  his  notice  if  he  be  otherwise  dis- 
posed. It  was  because  Newton  was  ready  for  the 
law  of  gravitation  that  he  detected  it  in  the  falling 
of  the  apple.  It  was  because  Davy  was  keen  for  the 
discovery  of  a  new  motive-power  that  he  found  it  in 
the  steam  that  raised  the  lid  of  his  boiling  teapot. 
It  was  because  Edison  was  on  the  track  of  the  tele- 


THE   RESURRECTION.  289 

phone  that  he  was  able  to  invent  it,  —  because  all 
his  brain-power  and  all  his  senses  were  on  the  qui- 
vive  to  the  finest  methods  for  the  communication  of 
sound.  The  same  phenomena,  the  same  facts  uf 
nature,  had  been  for  centuries  at  the  disposal  of  man- 
kind ;  but  mankind  were  blind  and  deaf  to  them. 
It  was  because  Newton  and  Davy  and  Edison  were 
not  blind,  because  on  the  contrary  tliey  were  intensely 
predisposed  to  see,  that  they  were  able  actually  to 
make  their  great  discoveries.  Now  I  claim  that  in 
this  matter  of  the  resurrection  from  the  dead,  you 
and  I,  my  brethren,  are  in  a  far  better  position  to 
weigh  the  evidence  for  it,  to  see  the  signs  of  it,  than 
our  forefathers  were ;  and  that  for  this  reason.  The 
scientific  investigations  ^  of  our  age,  and  in  particular 
those  of  Darwin,  have  established  beyond  controversy 
this  fact :  that  the  natural  desires  of  every  creature 
invariably  find  their  satisfaction,  —  that  the  mere 
existence  of  the  desire  implies  that  somewhere  in 
nature's  repertory  there  exists  the  means  to  gratify  it. 
Darwin  lays  it  down  as  an  axiom,  applicable  to  the 
whole  range  of  living  being,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  useless  desire,  —  that  desires  are  never  vain, 
—  and  that  the  great  lever  of  progress  from  proto- 
plasm to  fully  developed  man  has  been  the  continual 
search  for  the  satisfaction  of  desire,  and  the  success 

^  For  the  scientific  illustrations  of  this  sermon  I  am  deeply  in- 
debted to  Canon  Macoll's  "Christianity  in  Relation  to  Science  and 
Morals." 


240  THE   RESURRECTION. 

of  that  search.  Whatever  the  desire  of  any  living 
creature  may  be,  you  may  be  sure  of  its  fulfilment ; 
you  can  find  its  fulfilment,  if  only  you  have  eyes  to  see. 
Hunger  implies  food ;  thirst  implies  drink ;  the  eye 
implies  sight ;  the  pinions  of  the  bird  imply  the  atmos- 
phere against  which  the  wings  may  beat  to  raise  the 
bird  on  high ;  the  web  which  the  spider  weaves  implies 
the  insect  which  shall  therein  be  caught  for  food  ;  the 
very  inability  of  the  orchid  to  fertilize  itself  implies  the 
bee  that  shall  bring  to  it  unawares  the  pollen  of  other 
flowers.  And  as  with  the  lower  animals,  so  also  with 
mankind.  The  impulse  of  the  architect  to  construct 
implies  the  wood  and  stone  and  iron  wherewith  the 
building  can  be  done ;  the  artist's  impulse  to  depict 
on  canvas  or  to  carve  in  marble  his  subtile  appre- 
hensions of  natural  beauty  implies  the  pigments, 
brush,  and  chisel  wherewith  his  work  is  created. 
Once  detected,  the  illustrations  of  this  law  are  seeu 
to  be  as  manifold  and  as  interesting  as  the  whole 
wide  universe  of  being. 

Shall  the  law  then  cease  to  operate  just  where  it  is 
most  demanded?  If  there  be  such  a  thing  as  the 
reign  of  law  (and  on  that  our  whole  modern  science 
depends),  shall  its  reign  stop  short  at  precisely  those 
desires  of  man  which  most  ennoble  him  ;  which  dis- 
tinguish him  from  the  lower  orders  of  beings  ;  which 
have  been  the  motive-power  of  all  that  is  peculiar 
in  civilization  ?  The  magnet  of  raw  iron  implies  in- 
variably the  pole.     Put  the  magnet  in  a  vacuum,  in 


THE  RESURRECTION.  241 

absolutely  empty  space,  and  the  magnet  will  point 
nowhere  ;  it  remains  motionless.  But  put  it  in  the 
world  as  we  find  it,  and  the  magnet  points  always  to 
the  pole.  And  is  it  reasonable  then  to  suppose  that 
the  human  soul,  the  highest  stage  of  all  in  nature's 
evolution,  —  the  human  soul,  with  impulses  as  uni- 
versal and  imperative  and  useful  as  those  of  any  lower 
order  of  being,  —  is  it  possible  that  the  human  soul 
is  the  one  exception  to  the  rule  ?  that  there  this  reign 
of  law  abruptly  stops  ?  No,  until  you  can  show  just 
cause  for  such  an  impotent  conclusion,  it  is  profoundly 
irrational  to  admit  it  for  a  moment. 

Now  of  all  the  desires  of  mankind,  the  desire  for 
immortality  in  body  and  soul  together  is  the  keenest, 
unless  the  man  be  brutalized.  The  higher  the  type 
of  man,  the  nobler  his  achievements,  the  sweeter  his 
affections,  the  grander  his  ideals  and  his  plans,  so 
much  the  intenser  has  always  been  his  desire  not  to 
die.  More  and  more  he  feels  that  this  short  life  is 
not  the  whole  of  him  :  that  there  is  a  higher,  an  end- 
less sphere  of  being  into  which  death  will  usher  him. 
The  lower  animals  for  the  most  part  seem  adapted  to 
their  abode.  There  is  no  indication  in  them  of  any 
wish  for  a  hereafter.  The  bird  in  the  egg,  indeed, 
the  caterpillar  in  the  chrysalis,  are  not  fully  adapted 
to  their  abode  ;  you  see  in  them  the  rudiments  of 
organs  that  point  to  another  state  of  being.  But 
when  the  bird  has  broken  its  shell,  when  the  cater- 
pillar has  emerged  from  its  chrysalis,  there  is  in  them 

16 


242  THE  RESURRECTION. 

no  further  mark  of  inadaptation  to  their  surroundings. 
Like  all  the  other  beasts  that  perish,  they  are  quite 
contented  with  their  home,  and  give  no  sign  of  larger 
longings  than  eartli  can  satisfy.  But  man  is  not  quite 
adapted  to  his  earthly  home ;  the  shell  is  not  large 
enough,  nor  lasting  enough  for  its  tenant.  The  veri- 
est savage  shows  his  discontent  by  at  least  building 
the  most  enduring  monument  of  himself  that  his 
rude  skill  can  raise.  The  one  unanimous  refrain  of 
human  literature  from  its  dawn  until  to-day,  from 
Homer  and  the  Zend-Avesta  to  Dante  and  Shake- 
speare and  Goethe  and  Tennyson,  is  that  the  aspira- 
tions and  endeavors  of  the  soul  transcend  the  boun- 
dary of  mortal  life.  Man's  thirst  for  knowledge,  for 
beauty,  for  power ;  his  persistent  longing  for  the 
dead ;  his  indomitable  horror  at  the  idea  of  his  per- 
sonal annihilation,  —  all  these,  which  have  been  the 
mainspring  of  his  progress  here,  are  also  the  gauge  of 
his  strong  desire  for  immortality.  And  I  insist  that 
by  all  the  force  of  analogy,  by  the  stress  of  right  rea- 
son, by  the  significance  of  the  universal  reign  of  law, 
and  above  all  by  cogent  inference  from  his  own 
recently  discovered  law  that  every  desire  implies  the 
satisfaction  of  it,  —  I  say  that  it  is  going  against  all 
our  best  knowledge  of  the  universe  and  of  man  him- 
self, to  suppose  that  his  insatiable  impulse  after  a 
personal  immortality  is  to  be  robbed  of  fruition,  — 
that  man's  highest  and  last  desire  is  the  one  to  be 
balked. 


THE   RESURRECTION.  243 

How  all  this  comes  out  especially  in  the  Christ, 
whose  resurrection  from  the  grave  we  celebrate 
to-day  !  By  common  consent,  apart  from  all  ques- 
tions of  theology  and  of  His  Divine  Nature,  Jesus 
Christ  is  the  perfect  Man,  —  the  highest  type  of  man- 
hood that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  And  in  Him 
this  desire  of  innnortality  passes  into  absolute  con- 
viction. Xotice  Him  as  His  death  draws  near.  Lis- 
ten to  Him  as  He  prays  with  His  Apostles  in  the 
upper  chamber  the  night  before  His  betrayal : 
"  Father,  the  hour  is  come ;  glorify  Thy  Son,  that 
Thy  Son  also  may  glorify  Thee.  .  .  .  And  now  I  am 
no  more  in  the  world,  but  these  are  in  the  world,  and 
I  come  to  Thee.  .  .  .  Holy  Father,  keep  through 
Thine  own  Name  those  whom  Thou  hast  given  Me, 
that  they  may  be  one,  as  We  are.  ...  I  pray  for 
them.  .  .  .  Father,  I  will  that  they  also  whom  Thou 
hast  given  Me,  be  with  Me  where  I  am,  that  they 
may  behold  My  glory,  which  Thou  hast  given  JNIe  ; 
for  Thou  lovedest  Me  before  the  foundation  of  the 
world."  Would  it  be  possible  to  imagine  a  more 
complete  expression  of  the  intense  desire  of  the 
perfect  Man  for  the  immortality  of  Himself  and  those 
He  loves?  The  highest  development  of  humanity 
utters  this  desire  the  most  intensely  of  all.  And  as 
we  confront  Him  on  the  Via  Dolorosa,  as  we  watch 
Him  dying  on  the  Cross,  our  reason  conmiands  us 
to  believe  that  that  desire  of  Jesus  is  certain  of 
satisfaction. 


244  THE  llESURRECTION. 

True,  ia  Jesus  Christ  the  desire  for  immortality  is 
a  desire  for  something  more  than  immortality  ;  it  is  a 
desire  to  be  immortal  with  God.  But  in  the  last  ex- 
pression even  of  our  erring  wishes  to  continue  after 
death,  is  there  not,  my  brothers,  something  of  the 
same  ?  Do  not  all  our  desires  lead  us  at  last  to  God 
Himself,  and  merge  themselves  in  Him  ?  This  love 
of  knowledge,  this  insatiable  curiosity  that  in  all  ages 
has  sent  man  across  inhospitable  deserts,  and  over  for- 
bidding seas,  and  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth ;  that 
has  induced  him  to  pass  sleepless  nights  and  laborious 
days  in  exploring  the  secrets  of  science  and  scrutiniz- 
ing the  records  of  history,  —  does  it  not  invariably 
land  the  student  at  a  point  where  he  must  be  think- 
ing of  God  ?  And  love,  is  it  not  the  very  essence  of 
the  quality  of  human  affection  that  it  suggests  God  ? 
And  beauty,  is  not  all  the  best  poetry  of  our  litera- 
tures a  witness  that  the  ideal  beauty  is  Divine ;  that 
the  evanescent  loveliness  of  earth  beckons  the  soul 
to  the  world  where  loveliness  is  eternal  ?  Ah,  we  are 
making  a  sorry  mistake  if  we  allow  ourselves  to  fancy 
that  the  immortality  that  we  are  in  search  of  is  an 
immortality  without  God.  Any  immortality  which 
should  be  a  mere  repetition  of  this  world,  out  of 
which  and  away  from  which  we,  by  our  own  con- 
fession, have  been  growing,  —  any'immortality  which 
should  shut  us  up  in  ourselves  and  our  creaturely 
circumstances,  apart  from  the  Divine  Being  whom 
even  here  and  now  we  have  discerned  in  them,  —  any 


THE   EESUREECTION.  245 

immortality  without  God  would  be  indeed  a  hell. 
''  Thou,  O  Lord  God,  art  the  thing  that  I  long  for. " 
"  Like  as  the  hart  desireth  the  waterbrooks,  so  long- 
eth  my  soul  after  Thee,  O  God.  My  soul  is  athirst 
for  God,  yea  even  for  the  living  God  !  When  shall  I 
come  to  appear  before  the  presence  of  God  ?  "  Such 
is  the  real  content,  the  true  object  of  man's  universal 
impulse,  of  his  progressive  desire.  The  man  who 
accepts  the  revelation  of  Easter  morning  must  be 
jjrepared  to  submit  himself  to  a  process  of  much 
winnowing,  of  constant  purification.  He  must  be 
prepared  to  see  God  as  He  is,  and  to  love  Him  and 
serve  Him  as  He  is,  "  Our  God  is  a  consuming  fire." 
"  Every  man's  work  shall  be  made  manifest :  for  the 
day  shall  declare  it,  because  it  shall  be  revealed  by 
tire  ;  for  the  fire  shall  try  every  man's  work,  of  what 
sort  it  is."  Even  true  earthly  love  soon  teaches  a 
man  what  it  is  to  be  purified  by  one's  own  desire. 
Many  a  man  who  had  no  conception  what  the  love 
of  woman  would  do  for  him,  has  been  amazed  to  find 
how  it  lifted  him  out  of  his  lower  self  and  raised  him 
to  a  higher,  unselfish  plane.  All  that  renovating  and 
elevating  power  was  hidden  in  the  flame  of  his  own 
desire,  though  he  little  guessed  it  at  the  first.  And 
can  it  possibly  be  otherwise  with  the  soul's  love  of  our 
Father  which  is  in  heaven  ?  This  is  the  very  essence 
of  our  Easter  message.  This  is  what  Saint  Paul 
refers  to  when  he  speaks  so  often  of  the  "  risen  life." 
"  If  ye  then  be  risen  with  Christ,  seek  those  things 


246  THE   RESURRECTION. 

which  are  above,  where  Christ  sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  God."  But  when  we  recognize  all  this,  and 
are  prepared  to  struggle  to  attain  it ;  when  we  feel 
the  glow  of  Easter  morning  mellowing  our  earthly 
impulses  and  suggesting  to  us  that  it  is  straight  to 
God  they  carry,  —  how  often,  alas !  we  find  ourselves 
abashed  and  chilled  by  the  cold,  dark  spirit  of  scep- 
ticism, inspiring  a  doubt  whether  there  be,  for  us  at 
any  rate,  any  personal  life  after  all,  —  any  personal 
resurrection  ;  whether  we  have  any  proof  at  any  rate, 
that  our  hope  of  future  immortality  is  justified  by 
what  we  know  of  present  facts.  It  is  at  such  mo- 
ments, I  think,  that  the  considerations  which  I  have 
to-day  suggested  will  be  especially  helpful  to  us ; 
showing,  as  they  do,  that  the  stress  of  the  most  mod- 
ern scientific  principles,  and  the  entire  tendency  of 
our  being,  and  the  very  constitution  of  animal  life  as 
a  whole,  compel  us  to  the  inference  that,  as  every 
desire  of  every  known  species  of  being  implies  and 
involves  its  satisfaction,  so  also  this  universal  desire 
of  mankind  to  live  forever,  and  to  be  forever  with 
God,  is  bound  to  be  fulfilled.  God  is  our  shield,  and 
our  exceeding  great  reward.  Just  because  we  desire 
a  better  country,  even  an  heavenly,  therefore  God  is 
not  ashamed  to  be  called  our  God  ;  for  He  hath 
prepared  for  us  a  city. 


XIX. 

THE   LONGS  UFFERING   GOD. 

The  Lord,  the  Lord   God,  merciful  and  gracious,  longsuf- 
lering.  —  Exodus  xxxiv.  6. 

THIS  is  one  of  those  passages  which  make  mani- 
fest the  divineness  of  the  Bible ;  how  it  was 
really  a  revelation ;  how  truly  inspired.  Here  we 
have  a  description  of  God's  character.  It  is  not 
marvellous  to  us;  it  is  the  description  of  God  we 
have  been  familiar  with  from  childhood.  But  put 
yourself  for  a  moment  in  the  place  of  those  to  whom 
these  words  were  originally  addressed;  recall  their 
ways  of  thinking  and  feeling ;  the  customs  of  their 
society,  of  their  homes  ;  their  habitual  type  of  char- 
acter ;  the  prevalent  view  of  the  world,  and  of  God's 
relation  to  the  world,  —  consider  these  things  ant} 
then  you  will  appreciate  how  imijossible  it  is  that 
any  such  view  of  God's  cliaracter  as  this  of  our  text 
could  have  been  conceived  by  them,  except  as  a 
revelation  from  on  high. 

Moses  and  the  Israelites  were  living  in  the  Oriental 
world,  and  the  Oriental  mind  was  essentially  despotic. 


248  THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD. 

We  see  this  to-day  in  those  countries  where  our 
western  ways  have  not  yet  changed  the  face  of  things ; 
there  are  nations  where  the  same  characteristics  of 
thought  and  manners  prevail  now  as  at  the  period 
when  this  book  Exodus  was  written.  And  the 
extant  literature  and  monuments  of  these  past  ages 
tell  the  same  story.  It  was  a  time  when  the  will  of 
the  father  in  his  family  was  the  perfect  type  of  that 
of  the  king  in  his  kingdom  ;  the  father  was  a  despot 
in  his  family,  and  so  was  the  king  on  his  throne. 
The  king's  will,  the  king's  most  passing  whim,  was 
the  law  for  all.  He  was  alike  and  altogether  jury 
and  judge  and  lawgiver  and  master  of  armies. 
Whomsoever  he  blessed  was  blessed,  and  whomsoever 
he  cursed  was  cursed.  Hundreds  of  minions  waited 
on  his  nod  ;  thousands  of  slaves  were  ready  to  fulfil 
with  expedition  his  works  and  plans.  With  him  to 
will  was  to  execute,  for  there  were  no  hindrances ; 
to  brook  the  slightest  hindrance,  to  be  willing  to 
compound  with  delays,  was  ijjso  facto  to  be  unkingly. 
This  was  the  prevalent  ideal  of  the  family  and  the 
state,  which  it  Avas  the  whole  tendency  of  things  to 
uealize  wherever  the  father  and  the  king  were  by 
personal  character  equal  to  their  opportunities. 

And  this  view  of  earthly  matters  was  projected 
into  the  heavenly.  To  the  Oriental  mind  God  also 
was  a  despot ;  if  He  had  been  otherwise  He  could 
not  have  been  conceived  of  as  God.  Is  not  the  very 
attribute  of  God  omnipotence  ?  and  if  God   be  by 


THE   LONGSTIFFERING  GOD.  249 

nature  all-powerful,  will  He  not  naturally  and  of 
course  proceed  at  once  and  arbitrarily  to  execute  His 
will  ?  Such  was  the  drift  of  the  Oriental  religious 
feeling,  and  the  logic  of  the  Oriental  mind ;  nor  need 
we  look  farther  than  to  Calvin  to  see,  even  in  our 
modern  Western  civilization,  proofs  that  such  views 
of  the  Divine  Being  are  far  from  foreign  to  us,  by  no 
means  necessarily  irrational.  What  God's  real  nature 
is,  is  a  question  of  fact ;  as  tar  as  we  can  see  before- 
hand theoretically,  there  is  much  in  man  and  much 
in  the  material  world  that  would  seem  to  lead  to 
contradictory  conclusions  about  Him.  And  at  any 
rate  the  Oriental  view  of  God  was  despotic. 

Directly  in  opposition  to  that  view,  then,  came  this 
revelation  of  God  to  Moses  :  "  And  the  Lord  passed 
by  before  him,  and  proclaimed.  The  Lord,  the  Lord 
God,  merciful  and  gracious,  longsufFering."  Long- 
suffering  is  the  antithesis  of  despotic.  Yet  Moses 
had  come  of  the  race  of  the  patriarchs  ;  of  those  to 
whom  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac  by  his  father  Abraham, 
even  if  it  had  been  consummated,  would  have  ap- 
peared quite  proper,  because  the  father  of  every 
family  was  held  to  have  authority  even  over  the  life 
of  his  wives  and  children.  And  Moses,  born  of  such 
blood,  had  been  educated  in  Egypt,  in  the  house  of 
Pharaoh,  —  in  the  land  where  the  idea  of  a  blind  and 
darksome  fate  tinctured  all  the  customs  of  religion 
and  society,  and  where  Pharaoh's  will  and  Pharaoh's 
wliims  were  as  sure  of  execution,  as  inexorable,  as 


250  THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD. 

fate  itself.  Beyond  question,  then,  we  have  evidence 
in  this  book  Exodus  of  something  higher  than  mere 
natural  religion,  —  of  something  finer  and  sweeter 
than  the  instinctive  conscience  of  that  benighted  age 
and  people.  It  is  God  Himself  coming  down  to  man, 
and  rectifying  man's  partial  notions  of  His  Divine 
Being  and  character ;  supplementing  and  transform- 
ing the  idea  of  onmipotence  by  that  of  patient  and 
persevering  mercy.  "  And  Moses  said  unto  the  Lord, 
See,  Thou  sayest  unto  me,  bring  up  this  people.  .  .  . 
Now  therefore,  I  pray  Thee,  if  I  have  found  grace  in 
Thy  sight,  shew  me  now  Thy  way,  that  I  may  know 
Thee ;  .  .  .  I  beseech  Thee,  shew  me  Thy  glory. 
And  Moses  rose  up  early  in  the  morning,  and  went 
up  unto  Mount  Sinai,  as  the  Lord  had  commanded 
him,  and  took  in  his  hand  the  two  tables  of  stone. 
And  the  Lord  descended  in  the  cloud,  and  stood  with 
him  there,  and  proclaimed  the  Name  of  the  Lord. 
And  the  Lord  passed  by  before  him,  and  proclaimed, 
The  Lord,  the  Lord  God,  merciful  and  gracious,  long- 
suffering.  .  .  .  And  INIoses  made  haste,  and  bowed 
his  head  toward  the  earth,  and  worshipped." 

Such  was  the  singular  revelation  to  the  leader  of 
Israel  as  to  the  essential  character  of  the  Almighty. 
And  the  whole  subsequent  history  of  the  Israelites 
was  an  exemplification,  a  practical  demonstration  of 
this.  When  we  look  at  that  history  as  a  whole, 
noticing  the  perpetual  aberrations  of  this  chosen 
people,  their  inadequacy  to  their  own  mission,  their 


THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD.  251 

misuse  of  opportunities,  the  repeated  betra^'als  of 
their  trust,  their  unfortunate  approaches  to  the  hea- 
then nations  around  them,  their  witchcraft  and  idohi- 
tries,  the  complete  obliteration  of  the  Ten  Tribes, 
the  seventy  years  captivity  of  the  two  remaining 
tribes,  their  conquest  by  the  Greeks,  and  again  by 
the  Romans,  until  their  very  existence  as  a  separate 
nation  was  voided  ;  and  how  this  moment  of  their 
disappearance  as  a  nation  under  the  imperial  supre- 
macy of  Rome  was  the  moment  of  the  appearance  of 
the  long-promised  Messiah,  —  when,  I  say,  we  regard 
this  chequered  history  of  the  Jews  as  a  whole,  seeing, 
as  we  can,. the  end  from  the  beginning,  the  impression 
that  it  makes  on  us  is  precisely  this  :  it  is  a  vindica- 
tion of  the  revelation  to  Moses,  —  a  practical  demon- 
stration, in  a  wide  area  of  human  life,  of  God's 
character,  not  as  despotic  but  as  longsuffering,  —  not 
as  of  One  who,  because  He  is  all-powerful,  breaks 
and  effaces  the  opposition  of  his  subjects,  but  as  One 
who  is  content  to  wait  on  human  wills  even  for  the 
fulfilment  of  the  Divine  plan  that  has  been  determined 
from  all  eternity.  God  has  put  His  treasure  in 
earthen  vessels,  and  He  remembers  whereof  men  are 
made. 

It  is  striking  to  observe  how  continually  difficult  it 
is  for  the  human  soul  to  lay  hold  of  this  feature  of 
the  Divine  character  as  a  present  fact.  Looking  at 
the  past,  we  detect  it ;  but  in  the  stress  and  perplex- 
ity of  present  life  it  eludes  us.     And  the  occasions 


252  THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD. 

which  produce  this  difficulty  for  the  soul,  —  the  rea- 
sons why  the  human  mind  finds  it  hard  to  grasp  this 
present  fact  of  the  Divine  Mind  as  a  patient  and  per- 
sistent Providence,  and  not  a  despot,  —  vary  from  age 
to  age.  To  the  Oriental  mind,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
this  difficulty  arose  from  the  general  conditions  of 
Oriental  life.  Power  in  the  Orient  was  seldom  pa- 
tient and  forbearing ;  it  was  swift  and  arbitrary, 
regardless  of  the  personality  and  the  privileges  of 
subordinates.  Hence  the  subjects  of  earthly  sover- 
eigns were  wont  to  project  into  heaven  their  experi- 
ence of  earth,  —  to  imagine  their  God  as  they  saw 
their  king.  In  our  day  the  difficulty  arises  from  a 
cause  the  direct  opposite  of  this.  Life  was  small 
and  simple  in  the  ancient  world  ;  in  the  modern  it  is 
complex  and  large.  The  human  mind  has  analyzed 
the  universe  and  split  it  into  bits.  The  multiplicity 
of  nature,  the  infinity  of  life's  details,  —  so  vast  and 
far  that  the  telescope  cannot  reach  them,  so  tiny  and 
so  intricate  that  the  microscope  cannot  fully  disclose 
them,  so  various  that  each  separate  science  has 
branches  enough  to  occupy  the  entire  intelligence  of 
man,  —  this  is  the  aspect  both  of  the  animate  and  the 
inanimate  world  which  in  our  age  most  abashes  man's 
powers  of  comprehension.  Starting  with  the  innate 
idea  of  design,  without  which  our  reason  refuses  to 
take  a  step,  because  if  reason  be,  chaos  cannot  be,  • — 
starting  with  this  original  idea  of  design,  our  modern 
science  has  found  itself  compelled  to  follow  out  that 


THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD.  253 

idea  to  an  extent  that  is  bewildering.  We  had  learned 
previously  to  think  of  our  God  as  patient,  because  of 
the  facts  of  the  Old  Testament  history  and  because 
of  the  influence  of  Jesus  ;  and  therefore  we  were 
quite  ready  to  see  design  in  nature  because  design 
suggests  patience,  and  patience  permits  design.  But 
now^  our  idea  of  design  has  taken  us  beyond  all 
bounds.  Not  only  in  the  development  of  mankind, 
but  in  the  development  of  the  whole  universe  of 
nature,  we  find  designs  which,  if  there  be  a  designing 
mind  at  all,  it  has  required  thousands  and  millions  of 
ages  to  achieve ;  designs  involving  an  infinitude  of 
efforts,  crossed  by  what  to  our  eyes  looks  like  failure, 
to  be  crowned  only  after  the  expiration  of  aeons  with 
success  which,  if  in  one  aspect  complete,  in  another 
seems  accidental.  There  is  no  denying  the  plan, 
there  is  no  concealing  the  success.  Even  the  phrase 
"  survival  of  the  fittest "  admits  both  the  plan  and 
the  success.  For  if  there  be  no  plan,  how  can  any- 
thing be  either  fit  or  unfit ;  and  if  the  fittest  survive, 
then  the  plan  has  succeeded.  But  is  not  nature  her 
own  plan  ?  Is  there  a  personal  God  succeeding  in 
nature  ?  Is  there  any  Being  behind  nature,  other 
than  nature,  at  all  ?  Is  not  nature  too  slow  and  too 
multiplex  to  be  so  much  as  permitted  by  an  omnipo- 
tent God  ?  Personality  implies  not  merely  design,  but 
desire  ;  and  if  to  infinite  Desire  there  be  added  in- 
finite Will,  is  it  possible  that  this  infinite  Will  should 
be  so  utterly  longsuffering  in  the  execution  of  His 
designs  as  the  disclosures  of  science  indicate? 


254  THE  LONGSUFFERING  GOD. 

Do  you  not  see,  my  brothers,  tliat  this  objection 
issues  from  the  same  misconception  of  God  which 
clouded  the  Oriental  mind  ?  We  indeed  have  repu- 
diated arbitrary  governments  among  men,  but  we 
still  allow  it  to  God.  Even  though  the  facts  of  the 
Old  Testament  history  and  the  life  and  teachings  of 
Jesus  Christ  had  induced  us  to  think  of  God  as  a 
longsuffering  Father  towards  the  human  soul,  yet 
now  we  are  tempted  to  waver  in  this  faith  because  of 
what  modern  science  has  revealed  to  us.  The  evi- 
dent delays  and  complexities  of  the  natural  world 
seem  to  many  minds  in  our  day  incompatible  with 
the  idea  of  God's  onmipotence,  as  making  impossible 
demands  upon  such  a  God's  patience.  It  seems  to 
some  that  an  Almighty  Being  could  not  put  up  with 
such  infinite  delays,  could  not  be  so  longsuffering. 
Nevertheless  such  a  view  of  what  would  be  necessary 
to  God's  perfection,  if  there  be  a  God,  does  not  agree 
with  our  modern  view  of  even  human  perfection.  It 
does  not  square,  for  example,  with  the  modern  ideal 
of  national  government.  Our  latest  conception  of 
the  best  human  government  is  a  government  of  the 
people,  for  the  people,  by  the  people ;  and  such  gov- 
ernment necessitates  design,  and  a  troublesome  com- 
plication of  the  wheels  of  government,  —  perpetual 
postponement  and  patience.  Why,  then,  should  our 
conception  of  the  Divine  government  be  contrary  to 
this  ?  For  what  is  the  root  reason  why  the  govern- 
ment of  the  people  by  and  for  themselves  has  finally 


THE  LONGSUTFERING  GOD.  255 

commended  itself  as  the  best  ?  Is  it  not  because  it 
has  become  more  and  ever  more  apparent  to  mankind 
that  individual  character  is  the  most  precious  thing 
in  human  life,  and  therefore  that  tliat  method  of 
government  is  best  which  is  most  promotive  of  indi- 
vidual character  ?  Just  because  the  Almighty  Father 
of  us  all  is  all-powerful,  He  is  also  infinitely  versatile 
and  infinitely  longsuffering  in  the  achievement  of  His 
design.  Character,  good  character,  is  the  design  of 
God.  All  the  other  materials  of  the  world,  all  the 
other  designs  of  the  world,  are  but  so  many  tools 
and  guises  and  methods  for  the  good  character  of 
God's  personal  and  intelligent  creatures.  To  Him  no 
outlay  is  too  great,  no  field  too  vast,  no  materials  too 
abundant,  no  methods  too  circuitous  ;  for  only  thus 
can  character  be  secured  in  the  creatures  of  His 
hands.  Personal  character  in  the  creature  implies 
will  in  the  creature  ;  and  the  very  fact  that  God  has 
created  finite  wills  assures  us  that  He  will  never 
play  the  tyrant  with  them ;  for  to  coerce  a  will  is  to 
extinguish  it,  since  the  essence  of  will  is  choice.  God 
chooses  that  all  His  personal  creatures  should  like- 
wise choose ;  and  therefore  He  will  draw  them,  and 
impress  them,  but  not  coerce  them.  Rather  He  will 
wait  for  them  indefinitely,  because  by  any  other  course 
God  would  defeat  His  own  design. 

I  said  that  we  have  a  hint  of  this  in  what  the 
common  conscience  of  civilized  man  has  come  to 
recognize  as  the  best  form  of  human  government,  be- 


256  THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD. 

cause  the  freest.  But  have  we  not  an  even  better 
suggestion  and  adumbration  of  this  character  of  God 
in  what  we  all  recognize  as  the  typical  character  of 
the  human  father  who  is  at  once  good  and  strong  ? 
Surely  we  have  abandoned  the  idea  that  the  despotic 
father  is  the  good  father.  What  is  the  aim  of  every 
noble  father?  To  be  himself  what  he  would  have 
his  children  be  ;  to  impress  his  children,  but  not  co- 
erce them,  —  not  to  compel  his  boys  like  puppets, 
but  so  to  show  them  what  goodness  is  that  they  will 
choose  it  for  themselves,  that  their  own  wills  will 
agree  with  his.  And  is  it  not  the  peculiar  gift  of 
good  motherhood  to  be  longsuffering,  —  to  have  the 
genius  of  dexterity  and  invention  and  persistence  in 
influencing  her  children  to  love  what  she  loves  and 
choose  what  she  chooses?  Have  we  not  here,  then, 
an  evident  parable  in  the  beautiful  intimacy  of  home 
life  of  the  diviner  and  perfect  character  of  our  heav- 
enly Father  which  more  and  more  is  disclosed  to 
us  in  the  marvellous  intricacies  of  the  universe  ?  In 
tlie  sweet  and  strong  subordination  of  the  parent's 
designs  to  the  possibilities  of  the  child-life  and  of  the 
child-will  for  which  these  designs  are  entertained, 
have  we  not  a  parallel  to  those  vast  designs  of  the 
eternal  God,  who  is  never  wearied  by  delay,  nor  con- 
fused by  complexity?  If  there  is  subordination  as 
well  as  mastery  in  the  human  father,  may  there  not 
be  likewise  in  the  Divine  ? 

My  contention,  then,  is  this  :  that  the  most  modern 


THE   LONGSUFFERING  GOD.  257 

dictates  of  the  human  conscience  and  reason  as  to  what 
constitutes  the  ideal  government  in  the  private  home 
life  and  in  the  public  national  life  compel  us  to  admit 
that  the  recent  evidence  of  God's  longsufFering  in  the 
whole  natural  universe  agrees  with  our  true  concep- 
tion of  what  the  perfect  God  must  be.  Just  because 
God  is  all-powerful  He  nuist  be  also  infinitely  for- 
bearing, since  only  by  such  forbearance  can  the  true 
aims  of  power  be  achieved.  More  and  more  it  is 
borne  in  on  reflecting  minds  that  this  universe  of 
natural  forces  and  material  things  can  only  be  inter- 
preted in  terms  of  spirit ;  that  the  universe  is  irra- 
tional unless  it  be  spiritual  ;  that  there  is  a  tendency 
in  things  which  makes  for  righteousness,  and  right- 
eousness is  a  nnitter  of  free-will.  God's  design  in 
human  history  is  the  education,  the  persuasion,  not 
the  coercion,  of  man's  will.  The  entire  life  of  our 
race  has  been  to  discerning  eyes  a  spectacle,  not 
simply  of  God's  omnipotence,  but  of  God's  omnipo- 
tent patience ;  for  patience  is  the  essential  quality  of 
the  Divine  omnipotence.  This  notion  of  despotism 
which  haunts  us  so  is  a  hint  of  God's  perfect  power ; 
but  it  is  a  shameful  parody  of  that  power ;  it  shows 
how  very  far  gone  we  are  from  the  original  right- 
eousness in  which  God  created  man.  Power,  if  des- 
potic, defeats  itself,  it  is  imperfect ;  whereas  God  is 
perfect.  Given  the  known  facts  of  our  present  sin- 
ful character,  ready  for  evil  choices,  if  there  be  a  God 
He  must  be  patient  with  us,  or  else  He  could  accom- 

17 


258  THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD. 

plish  nothing.  Of  such  all-powerful  patience  our 
history  is  the  spectacle.  Human  history  is  like  one  of 
those  classic  musical  compositions  where  one  grand 
thought  predominates,  unfolds,  recurs,  gives  color 
and  meaning  and  unity  to  the  shades  and  turns  and 
transitions  of  the  mysterious  whole.  The  thought  of 
history  is  the  longsuffering  of  God  ;  the  records  speak 
for  themselves.  The  mere  theory  of  democracy,  now 
making  its  way  everywhere,  shows  how  this  fact  of 
the  Divine  government  has  slowly  approved  itself  to 
us  as  the  ideal  of  human  government ;  how  the  ideal 
of  justice,  peace;  a  fair  field  and  no  favor,  for  every 
individual,  and  of  forbearance  for  all,  has  been 
grasped  by  the  conscience  and  assumed  by  the  reason 
of  mankind.  Not  yet,  indeed,  have  the  nations  per- 
ceived that  the  final  purpose  of  such  government  is 
not  physical  comfort  or  mental  satisfaction,  but  physi- 
cal, mental,  and  spiritual  redemption  from  sin,  —  the 
purification  of  character.  The  eternal  counsels  of 
God,  the  secret  of  Jesus,  are  not  yet  understood  by 
the  world  as  the  Church  understands  them,  as  the 
Bible  reveals  them,  as  every  single  soul  shall  see 
them  hereafter  at  the  Judgment.  But  the  world  has 
at  length  come  to  see  that  the  end  of  all  government 
is  the  education  of  character,  even  though  sin  as  the 
obstacle  to  right  character  is  still  ignored  by  the 
world.  Thus  our  own  common  view  of  what  consti- 
tutes good  government  on  earth  prepares  us  for  the 
Bible  revelation  of  the  character  of  the  Most  High. 


THE   LONGSUFFERING   GOD.  259 

If,  then,  fresh  from  this  view  of  human  nature  and  of 
human  history,  we  turn  to  the  spectacle  of  the  natural 
world,  we  need  not  be  daunted  if  we  find  that  world 
making  similar  demands  upon  the  character  of  God. 
AVe  simply  find  the  universe  of  one  piece,  —  that  is  all ; 
man  and  nature  alike  calling  out  from  their  Creator 
perpetual  expressions  of  His  longsuftering ;  and  this 
as  nothing  else  could  impresses  us  with  a  sense  of 
the  reality  of  the  world.  Our  senses  tell  truth; 
our  reason  is  right ;  our  conscience  is  just.  Nature 
brings  the  same  revelation  of  God  that  man  does. 
God's  method  with  the  universe  is  identical  with  his 
method  with  the  human  soul.  To  both  He  shows 
Himself  the  same ;  and  in  some  mysterious  v.ay  He 
has  linked  tlie  fortunes  of  both  man  and  nature  to- 
gether, so  that,  as  Saint  Paul  says,  "  the  whole  crea- 
tion groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  together  until 
now.  And  not  only  they,  but  ourselves  also,  which 
have  the  first-fruits  of  the  Spirit,  even  we  ourselves 
groan  within  ourselves,  waiting  for  the  adoption,  to 
wit,  the  redemption  of  our  body." 

Finally,  dear  friends,  what  an  instance  we  who  be- 
lieve in  Christ  have  here  of  the  constantly  recurring 
fact  that  the  profouudest  truths  of  theology  come 
closest  to  our  ordinary  life,  —  to  our  daily  tasks  and 
efforts  and  troubles  !  What  grace  do  faithful  Chris- 
tians need  most,  perhaps  ?  Steadiness,  perseverance, 
—  longsuffering,  in  other  words.  And  to-day  we 
have  seen  that  this  is  not  merely  a  human  grace ;  it 


260  THE  LONGSUFFERING  GOD. 

is  the  grace  of  God,  the  essence  of  His  power.  In 
proportion,  then,  as  we  exercise  it  we  are  liker  to 
God  ;  it  is  God's  life  realized  in  our  lives.  To  be 
possessed  of  some  great  plan,  or  devoted  to  some 
great  cause,  or  bound  by  love  to  some  person,  and 
yet  be  obliged  to  wait  and  manage,  to  postpone  the 
fruition  of  our  hopes,  the  fulfilment  of  our  designs,  — 
herein  and  hereby  is  brought  home  to  us  the  most 
mysterious  feature  of  our  being  :  that  we,  poor,  erring, 
inadequate  creatures,  are  made  in  God's  image ;  that 
our  life,  like  God's  life,  if  we  be  noble,  if  we  be  really 
powerful,  will  be  a  life  of  longsuffering. 


XX. 

AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

By  wliat  authority  doest  Thou  these  things  ?  and  who  gave 
Thee  this  authority? —  St.  Matthew  xxi.  23. 

THAT  is  the  question  which  men  are  always  put- 
ting to  their  teachers,  and  in  our  age  especially 
to  their  religious  teachers.  We  need  not  wonder 
that  it  was  put  to  Jesus  Christ.  But  before  we  can 
understand  why  Jesus  in  this  case  parried  this  ques- 
tion, we  must  notice  who  they  were  who  put  it  to 
Him.  We  are  expressly  told  that  it  was  the  chief 
priests  and  scribes  who  put  the  question.  In  other 
words,  it  was  precisely  that  party  among  the  Jews 
who  laid  their  whole  stress  on  the  Mosaic  law  and 
the  Jewish  ecclesiastical  tradition.  Now  it  was  they 
who,  as  the  term  is  usually  employed,  were  most 
authoritative  in  their  religion,  —  depended  most  on 
what  we  should  probably  call  the  dogmatic  position. 
At  first  sight,  therefore,  it  might  appear  as  if  our 
Lord  was  here  avoiding  a  great  opportunity ;  for  as 
His  gospel  was  essentially  authoritative,  it  may  well 
seem  strange  that  He  should  decline  to  state  the 
source  of  His  authority  to  those  whose  whole  bias 


262  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

was  supposed,  by  themselves  at  any  rate,  to  be  in 
favor  of  the  dogmatic  method  of  religion.  Again  and 
again  Christ  did  state  to  others  the  grounds  of  His 
authority ;  why  does  He  decline  to  do  so  to  this 
deputation  of  the  chief  priests  and  scribes  ?  I  do  not 
think  that  we  can  discover  the  reason  of  Christ's 
silence  here,  without  comparing  the  passage  with  a 
previous  one  in  the  same  Gospel,  which  throws  light 
on  it  by  contrast.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  it  is  stated  that  "  It  came  to  pass, 
when  Jesus  had  ended  these  sayings,  the  people  were 
astonished  at  His  doctrine :  for  He  taught  them  as 
one  having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes."  Now 
surely  it  is  remarkable  that  the  scribes  should  here 
be  said  not  to  teach  with  authority  ;  for  according  to 
our  conventional  notions  of  authority  that  is  the  very 
note  of  their  teaching.  Their  method  consisted  in 
this,  that  whatever  maxim  they  enjoined,  whatever 
custom  they  enforced,  they  always  did  so,  not  as  of 
themselves,  but  with  an  appeal  to  the  ancient  tradi- 
tions of  their  Church  and  the  prestige  of  Moses  the 
Lawgiver.  And  wlien  we  examine  the  contents  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  we  find  that  our  Lord's 
method  was  apparently  tlic  reverse  of  this.  "  Ye 
have  heard  that  so  and  so  hath  been  said  of  them  of 
old  time  .  .  .  but  I  say  unto  you,"  is  His  constant 
refrain.  And  certainly  if  you  and  I  had  been  suddenly 
called  on  to  decide  whether  Christ  or  the  scribe  could 
the  more  properly  be  called  a  teacher  by  authority, 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  263 

we  should  have  answered  in  favor  of  the  scribe. 
Obviously,  therefore,  when  the  people  said  of  Jesus 
that  "He  taught  with  authority,  and  not  as  the 
scribes,"  they  Avere  suggesting  a  notion  as  to  what 
autliority  really  is,  very  different  from  that  which  we 
commonly  ascribe  to  it.  For  examiile,  it  is  often 
complained  of  a  certain  school  of  Churchmen  in  our 
day  that  they  lay  too  much  stress  ujDon  authority  in 
religion ;  that  is,  that  they  give  too  mucli  weight  to 
ecclesiastical  tradition.  Now,  without  turning  aside 
to  argue  whether  the  true  members  of  this  school  do 
so  or  not,  it  may  be  allowed  that  the  Jewish  scribes 
did  so ;  and  this  very  common  remark  in  regard  to  a 
church  party  in  our  day  goes  to  show  that  if  we  had 
been  living  in  the  days  of  Jesus  Christ's  ministry,  we 
should  have  said  that  it  was  the  scribes,  not  He,  who 
spoke  with  authority.  Now  here  we  are  laying  our 
finger,  1  think,  on  the  essential  difference  of  idea 
between  our  conventional  notion  of  what  constitutes 
authority  and  the  New  Testament  idea.  When  the 
people  declared  that  our  Lord  spoke  with  authority, 
they  were  using  the  phrase  in  its  exact  original  signi- 
fication ;  we  use  it  in  a  transferred  sense,  that  is,  we 
apply  the  term  to  a  process  of  thought,  a  method  of 
rational  appeal,  which,  however  correct  in  its  own 
sphere,  cannot  properly  be  called  authoritative.  Our 
derivative  usage  does  no  harm,  provided  we  remem- 
ber the  original  significance  of  the  phrase  and  inter- 
pret our  usage  accordingly ;  but  it  does  great  harm  if 


264  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

we  fail  to  appreciate  what  it  is  that  constitutes  any 
religious  argument,  whether  from  tradition  or  other- 
wise, really  authoritative.  The  appeal  to  tradition 
may  be  authoritative,  and  it  may  not ;  that  depends. 
And  it  is  because  this  question  goes  right  to  the  roots 
of  some  of  our  modern  difficulties  in  religion,  that  I 
ask  you  to  consider  with  me  this  morning,  my  friends, 
what  it  is  that  authority  really  signifies  ;  why  it  was 
that  the  Jewish  common  people  considered  that  Christ 
spoke  with  authority,  while  the  scribes  spoke  without 
it.  Then  we  shall  better  understand  why  our  Lord 
thought  best  to  parry  the  scribes'  inquiry,  when  tliey 
asked  Him  what  His  authority  was.  Then  too  we 
shall  carry  away  with  us  in  t)ur  text  to-day  a  very 
great  help  to  our  own  personal  religion. 

The  word  authority,  as  its  derivation  shows,  con- 
veys the  idea  of  the  personal  self  in  action,  in  pro- 
duction.^ A  man  speaks  with  the  supremest  authority 
possible  to  him  who  speaks  himself,  his  whole  self, 
straight  out ;  and  the  weight  of  his  authority  will 
depend  largely  on  the  weight  of  his  personality.  An 
abstract  idea  lacks  authority  until  it  comes  to  us  in 
and  across  some  living  human  being.  You  speak  of 
thought,  of  love,  of  art,  of  religion,  of  life  itself,  in 
the  abstract,  and  you  cannot  help  conveying  a  vague 
impression,  difficult  to  seize  and  easy  to  argue  about 
unconvincingly.  But  set  before  us  a  thoughtful  man, 
a  loving  man,  an  artistic  man,  a  religious  man,  a 

^  Augere,  to  produce,  to  create. 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  265 

living  human  being,  and  instantly  we  know  what 
you  mean.  The  mystery  of  the  matter  is  no  whit 
altered,  but  the  power  of  the  fact  is  felt.  The  lover 
speaks  with  the  authority  of  love,  the  artist  with  the 
authority  of  art,  the  thinker  with  the  authority  of 
thought,  because  in  each  of  these  love  and  art  and 
thinking  are  alive,  are  personal,  are  productive.  And 
the  reason  why  a  truly  religious  man  always  exercises 
an  unmistakable  authority  in  religion,  —  an  authority 
which  other  men  may  reject,  but  which  they  cannot 
deny,  —  is  precisely  this  :  that  one  chief  root  of  the 
scepticism  of  honest  sceptics  is  the  unreality  of  re- 
ligion to  the  sceptical  soul.  Such  souls  are  not  con- 
scious of  religion  in  themselves,  and  the  half-religion 
of  most  other  people  who  call  themselves  religious 
does  not  satisfy  the  sceptics.  But  once  let  a  truly, 
an  entirely  religious  person  live  and  move  before 
them,  and  instantly  religion  acquires  real  authority  in 
their  eyes.  The  authority  of  it  may  not  convince  the 
sceptic,  because  of  some  other  authority  to  which  he 
prefers  to  bow ;  but  at  any  rate  there  is  now  a  gen- 
uine and  actual  authority  for  religion,  because  religion 
is  vital  in  an  impressive  personal  being.  This  is  the 
original  significance  of  the  term  "authority."  And 
closely  allied  to  this  is  another,  equally  germane  to 
the  conception.  An  idea  acquires  authority,  not 
merely  because  it  is  realized  in  the  person  of  him 
who  utters  it,  but  also  because  it  finds  a  response  in 
those  to  whom  it  is  uttered ;  not  merely  because  it 


266  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

expresses  him,  but  because  it  expresses  them,  — 
represents  somewhat  of  their  own  being  and  experi- 
ence ;  and  the  more  persons  there  are  of  whose  per- 
sonal Hfe  the  idea  is  an  expression,  the  greater  will 
be  the  authority  of  the  idea.  Hence  we  see  wherein 
the  power  of  tlie  Christian  appeal  to  ecclesiastical 
tradition  consists.  Whenever  it  is  a  valid  appeal  its 
validity  consists  largely  in  this  fact :  that  a  man  who 
is  possessed  by  a  certain  truth,  and  who  desires  to 
commend  that  truth  to  other  people  of  his  own  day 
and  generation,  is  able  and  glad  to  show  them  that 
this  truth  has  been  embraced  not  only  by  himself  but 
by  countless  others  who  lived  before  him,  and  above 
ail  by  Jesus  Christ  Himself.  The  Christian  of  to-day 
is  not  content  with  the  authority  of  his  single  person- 
ality, but  desires  to  reinforce  it  by  the  authority  of  a 
long  line  of  other  personalities  in  the  past,  and  above 
all  by  what  we  call  the  primitive  authority  of  those 
who  lived  closest  in  time  to  Christ  Himself.  This 
usage  is  parallel  to  that  stirring  phrase  which  we  find 
so  constantly  in  the  Old  Testament :  "  The  God  of 
our  fathers."  It  is  the  authority  of  present  individual 
conviction  reinforcing  itself  by  the  authority  of  a 
great  many  other  individuals  whose  experience 
vouches  for  itself. 

A  singular  illustration  of  this  the  real  quality  of 
all  authority,  as  distinguished  from  mere  personal 
assertion  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  brute  force  on 
the  other,  was  furnished  this  summer  by  an  incident 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  267 

in  the  House  of  Commons  of  the  English  Pailiament. 
When  the  thirteenth  Parliament  of  Queen  Victoria 
assembled  last  August  at  Westminster,  the  first 
business  was  the  election  of  a  Speaker.  In  this  the 
notable  feature  was  the  cordiality  and  the  unanimity 
with  which  the  House,  whose  political  complexion 
had  been  radically  altered  by  the  recent  elections,  and 
whose  sections  are  divided  by  the  sharpest  and  strong- 
est differences  of  opinion,  joined  in  nominating  for 
Speaker  the  same  person  who  held  that  office  hereto- 
fore. Now  the  Speaker  wields  immense  power  in 
the  House.  He  presides  over  its  debates,  and  an- 
nounces the  rules  under  which  the  great  party  con- 
tests are  to  be  waged.  Yet  the  party  which  has  just 
come  into  power  joined  with  the  minority  in  re- 
appointing the  same  Speaker  who  had  held  office 
under  the  previous  r(3gime.  Such  action  is  conclusive 
testimony  to  the  courage,  the  ability,  and  the  impar- 
tiality of  the  man  elected  to  the  office ;  but  it  is 
testimony  to  something  more.  It  shows  conspicu- 
ously the  twofold  character  of  the  Speaker's  authority 
under  a  well-organized  popular  government :  it  is  the 
authority  of  the  single  personality  supported  by  the 
sympathy  of  the  great  band  of  personalities  over 
whom  he  presides.  It  is  not  merely  an  intellectual, 
it  is  essentially  a  moral  force. 

Now  the  authority  of  a  religious  leader  is  analogous 
to  the  above,  though  broader,  deeper,  and  more  deli- 
cate.    The  Jewish  scribes,  in  spite  of  their  ostenta- 


268  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

tious  appeal  to  tradition,  lacked  authority  in  the  eyes 
of  the  people,  not  because  the  people  did  not  respect 
their  own  traditions,  nor  because  these  traditions  did 
not  represent  a  great  deal  of  the  people's  personal  ex- 
perience, but  because  the  scribes  did  not  present  to 
the  people  the  authority  of  personal  religious  character. 
The  scribes  were  what  Christ  called  them,  hypocrites. 
Appealing  to  the  law,  they  were  not  as  individuals 
possessed  by  the  law,  living  exponents  of  its  spirit  in 
their  own  life  and  conversation.  And  it  was  because 
they  did  not  themselves  act  out  the  law  in  its  essen- 
tial spirit,  that  they  so  readily  overlaid  the  law  with 
extraneous  traditions  and  customs  of  their  own.  It 
takes  a  genuine  hypocrite  to  out-herod  Herod ;  and 
when  Christ  declared  against  some  features  of  the 
then  Jewish  law,  He  did  so  in  the  real  interest  of  the 
original  Mosaic  ideas  which  the  scribes'  traditions  had 
obscured.  As  He  Himself  insisted.  He  was  not 
destroying  the  law,  but  fulfilling  it.  And  the  evident 
reason  why  our  Saviour  parried  the  scribes'  question 
as  to  the  nature  of  His  own  authority  was  that  the 
scribes  were  not  sincere  in  asking  it.  The  authority 
of  true  personal  conviction  and  of  personal  loyalty 
to  the  Mosaic  traditions  was  wanting  in  themselves  ; 
and  hence  they  were  not  only  unworthy  to  receive 
Christ's  answer,  but  unable  to  understand  it  had  it 
been  given. 

It  would  be  an  interesting  study  for  us  to  open  at 
this  point  our  New  Testament  and  see  how  entirely 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  269 

Christ  Jesus  realized  in  Himself  what  we  have  fomid 
to  be  the  root  idea  of  authority,  —  the  authority  of 
the  individual  personality :  how  He  was  what  we 
call  whole-souled  in  his  grasp  and  presentation  of  the 
truth  He  preached  ;  so  much  so  that  He  alone  of  all 
men  that  ever  lived  could  declare,  "  I  am  the  truth." 
If  we  did  so,  we  should  of  course  observe  behind  and 
above  all  this,  which  is  within  the  scope  of  the  per- 
fect man,  that  the  authority  which  He  exercised  was 
more  than  human  because  He  Himself  was  more  than 
human.  It  is  this  ever-present,  predominant  con- 
sciousness on  His  part  of  His  own  essential  Divinity 
which  most  of  all  impressed  those  who  came  in  close 
contact  with  Him,  and  which  breathes  in  such  utter- 
ances as  these :  "  Before  Abraham  was,  I  am. ' 
"  Destroy  this  body,  and  in  three  days  I  will  raise  it 
up."  "  Which  of  you  convinceth  Me  of  sin  ?  "  ''I 
have  power  to  forgive  sins."  "  He  that  hath  seen  Me 
hath  seen  the  Father."  "  I  and  My  Father  are  one." 
"  If  a  man  love  Me,  he  will  keep  My  words  :  and 
My  Father  will  love  him,  and  We  will  come  unto  him 
and  make  Our  abode  with  him."  "  Peace  I  leave 
with  you.  My  peace  I  give  unto  you."  "  Father, 
glorify  Thou  Me  with  Thine  own  Self,  with  the  glory 
which  I  had  with  Thee  before  the  world  was."  Who 
can  read  these  sayings  of  Jesus  without  perceiving 
that  he  is  confronting  an  unique  Personality  ?  and  it 
is  this  uniqueness  of  Christ's  Personality,  combined 
with  the  thoroughness  of  its  expression,  which  con- 


270  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

tributes  to  the  uniqueness  of  His  authority  over  the 
human  soul.  Yet  even  in  Christ's  case  we  see  this 
authority  of  His  own  personality  reinforcing  itself  by 
the  experience  of  those  whom  He  addressed.  "  Come 
see  a  man  who  told  me  all  that  ever  I  did,"  —  that 
exclamation  of  the  woman  of  Samaria  is  the  utter- 
ance of  one  who  is  evidently  impressed,  not  only  by 
the  unique  personality  and  the  intense  personal  con- 
viction of  C'hrist  Himself,  but  also  by  Christ's  singu- 
lar power  of  reading  to  her  her  own  experience,  —  of 
summoning  to  the  aid  of  his  individual  authority  the 
authority  of  the  woman's  own  life,  whose  results  and 
meaning  she  could  not  gainsay.  "  Out  of  thine  own 
mouth  I  will  convince  thee,"  Christ  seems  to  say. 
And  when  in  our  own  day  a  true  Christian  preacher 
appeals  to  the  tradition  of  the  Church  as  of  binding 
force,  he  does  so  not  only  because  Jesus  Christ  stands 
behind  that  tradition,  but  also  because  the  experience 
of  the  Church  shows  up  what  the  religious  men  of 
Christendom  have  ascertained  to  be  the  outcome  of 
lumian  soul-life  ;  and  if  in  any  individual  case  the 
man's  own  self  does  not  respond  to  the  tradition, 
then  the  tradition  cannot,  for  the  time  being,  be  an 
authority  to  him.  Nay,  more,  so  strong  is  the  instinct 
of  mankind  in  regard  to  this  quality  of  true  author- 
ity, that  the  failures  of  the  Church  Catholic  to  con- 
vert the  world  to  Christ  may  be  largely  ascribed  to 
the  Church's  own  failure  to  embody  thoroughly  in 
herself  the  message  that  she  has  preached.     In  spite 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  271 

of  the  truth  to  which  she  witnesses,  in  spite  of  the 
validity  of  her  traditions,  the  world  is  only  impressed 
by  the  authority  of  the  Church's  witness  in  propor- 
tion as  she  is  herself  impressive  by  her  real  devotion 
to  Jesus.  The  church  that  is  lukewarm  or  worldly, 
lacks  authority  in  the  eyes  of  sinners,  and  will  lack 
it  to  the  end. 

But  I  desire  in  closing  to  turn  rather  to  the  other 
aspect  of  the  subject,  which  conveys  a  solemn  and 
searching  lesson  for  ourselves.  As  the  New  Testa- 
ment narrative  shows,  even  Jesus  Christ,  with  all  His 
intrinsic  authority,  was  dependent,  for  the  effect  of 
His  authority,  upon  the  character  and  will  of  those 
who  came  to  Him.  Over  the  hypocritical  scribes  He 
exercised  no  authority  whatever;  and  even  of  the 
populace  who  honestly  felt  His  power,  who  perceived 
that  He  spoke  with  authority  and  not  as  the  scribes, 
—  even  of  these  He  made  few  converts,  because  of 
the  hardness  of  their  hearts.  True  authority  is  not 
brute  force.  Even  God  Himself  does  not  coerce. 
The  Bible  reveals  to  us  that  the  devil  believes  in 
God,  but  the  deval  does  not  bow  to  God's  authority. 
How  seldom  we  take  in  the  import  of  what  the  New 
Testament  itself  contains  in  this  regard.  There  is 
the  very  Son  of  God,  living  in  human  form,  walking, 
teaching,  praying  among  the  children  of  men.  Yet 
after  a  life  of  three  and  thirty  years,  and  a  public 
ministry  of  nearly  three,  there  are  but  twelve  men 
whom  He  can  in  strict  sense  call  His  disciples,  and 


272  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

one  of  these  betrays  Him  !  And  He  is  the  Almighty 
God,  who  created  man,  and  holds  him  in  the  hollow 
of  His  hand !  He  whose  authority  is,  in  one  view, 
absolute  and  invincible,  stands  before  the  sinner  and 
says,  "  Wilt  thou  be  made  whole  ? "  It  is  God 
respecting  His  own  image  in  His  creature,  —  respect- 
ing the  individual  free-will  and  free  intellect.  Now 
is  it  not  the  natural  tendency  of  every  one  of  us,  my 
brethren,  who  is  possessed  by  strong  convictions,  to 
assume  towards  others  an  attitude  which  is  quite  the 
opposite  of  this  ?  Are  not  intolerance  and  earnest 
faith  to  be  seen  constantly  together  ?  Is  it  not  ex- 
tremely difficult  for  most  fathers,  for  example,  and  for 
most  teachers,  who  feel  quite  sure  tliat  they  know 
what  is  best  for  their  children  and  pupils,  —  is  it  not 
extremely  difficult  for  them  to  act  upon  Christ's  prin- 
ciple, that  even  the  authority  of  absolute  truth  can 
do  nothing  for  those  who  are  not  ready  for  it  ?  And 
do  we  not  all  of  us  fail  in  the  other  direction  also  ? 
—  fail  to  recollect  that  the  chief  thing  for  us  to  do,  if 
we  wish  to  be  authoritative,  is  to  be  in  ourselves  as 
far  as  possible  equal  to  the  truth  that  we  desire  to 
have  other  men  embrace  ?  There  is  a  very  practical 
and  personal  application  of  Christ's  saying,  "I  am 
the  truth."  Would  to  God  that  you  and  I  tried 
harder  to  be  what  we  believe.  There  is  no  authority 
like  personal  character  in  religion.  And  believe  me, 
the  hard-headed  men  of  the  world  respect  no  other,  — 
nay,  your  little  child,  with  his  shy  but  keen  insight. 


AUTHORITATIVE   KELIGION.  273 

he,  too,  in  the  long  run  respects  no  religious  authority 
but  this.  Nor  need  I  remind  you  that  this  authority 
is  never  acquired  by  us  except  from  God  ;  it  comes 
to  us  when  Almighty  God  co-operates  with  our  own 
free-will,  working  in  us  that  which  is  well-pleasing 
in  His  sight.  Even  in  our  Saviour's  case,  when  men 
asked  Him  whence  He  got  His  authority,  His  reply 
was  :  "  The  Father  who  dwelleth  in  Me,  He  doeth 
the  works." 

And  this  same  truth  has  another  face  which  must 
not  be  passed  by.  All  about  us  there  are  multitudes 
of  men  and  women  who,  with  a  greater  or  less  de- 
gree of  sincerity,  are  studious  of  Christianity,  con- 
cerned with  Christ's  message  to  mankind.  They  are 
really  attracted  by  Jesus ;  and  so  they  go  groping  in 
countless  books,  and  investigating  all  sorts  of  evi- 
dences, and  listening  to  this  person  and  that  person 
who  claims  to  have  something  to  say  about  Christ 
and  Christianity  and  the  Church  of  the  living  God. 
It  is  well.  But,  my  brother,  while  you  are  thus 
considering  what  other  men  can  do  to  help  you  to- 
wards Christ,  does  it  ever  occur  to  you  to  consider 
what  you  yourself  can  do  to  help  you  towards  Him  ? 
Does  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  possibly  you  may  ac- 
tually be  as  one  of  those  who  saw  Jesus  in  the  flesh, 
and  still  were  not  convinced  by  Him ;  that  if  ever 
Jesus  Christ  is  to  have  authority  over  you.  He  must 
first  have  authority  in  you,  from  you,  out  of  your 
own  life  ;  that  in  your  mind  and  heart  and  will  there 

18 


274  AUTHORITATIVE  RELIGION. 

must  be  a  response  to  Him  ?  The  authority  of  Jesus 
is  not  unlike  that  of  purity.  The  human  mind  and 
conscience  are  so  constituted  that  the  mere  presence 
of  a  pure  man  or  a  pure  woman  awakens  approval  in 
us.  Simply  to  see  purity  is  to  recognize  its  author- 
ity as  the  standard  for  human  life.  But  between 
such  recognition  and  the  being  one's  self  pure  there 
is  a  wide  interval.  You  yourself  must  be  trying  to 
be  pure  before  you  can  fully  appreciate  the  authority 
of  purity  in  another.  Now,  the  method  of  religion, 
the  movement  of  the  religious  mind,  are  somewhat 
like  that.  Many  a  thoughtful  and  reverential  man 
in  our  day,  disposed  to  be  a  Christian,  but  seeing 
that  he  cannot  fathom  beforehand  the  substance  of 
Christianity,  says  to  himself  :  "  If  this  were  a  matter 
of  business,  or  of  human  affection,  I  should  follow 
the  weight  of  probability.  In  such  cases  faith  is 
reasonable.  In  ordinary  life  faith  is  not  opposed  to 
reason,  but  to  sight.  You  have  got  to  live ;  but  in 
living  if  you  should  always  wait  till  you  can  com- 
pletely see,  you  would  die  first.  You  have  got  to 
act  on  faith  in  order  to  live,  and  so  faith  in  ordinary 
life  is  rational,  —  is  not  opposed  to  reason,  but  to 
sight.  It  is  more  reasonable  to  live  on  faith  than  to 
wait  till  you  are  dead,  because  you  cannot  com- 
pletely see.  Ordinary  life  is  a  perpetual  venture  of 
faith  in  business,  in  education,  in  jurisprudence,  in 
the  affections.  Reason  itself  is  a  venture  of  faith  in 
the  capacities  of  the  mind.     But  is  not  religion  dif- 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  275 

ferent  from  ordinary  life  ?  If  I  say  that  I  believe  the 
Christian  Creed,  that  I  believe  in  Jesus  Christ,  must 
I  not  thereby  imply  that  I  know  all  about  it  be- 
forehand ? "  To  that  question,  my  brethren,  I  an- 
swer emphatically,  Xo.  The  method  of  religion  and 
of  ordinary  life  ai-e  identical,  and  they  ought  to  be  ; 
for  true  religion  is  the  final  expression  of  man's 
life.  I  could  not  be  religious  if  I  did  not  find  that 
its  method  of  assent  is  identical  with  that  which  I 
have  to  employ  in  the  aftairs  of  my  daily  secular 
existence.  If  religion  did  not  harmonize  with  that, 
I  should  think  it  unnatural,  irrational,  to  be  religious. 
But  it  is  because  in  religion  likewise  faith  is  not  op- 
posed to  reason,  but  simply  to  sight ;  it  is  because  I 
feel  that  the  authority  of  Jesus  Christ  corresponds  to 
the  authority  which  I  am  always  assenting  to  when 
I  love  my  friend  before  I  have  complete  knowledge 
of  him,  or  when  I  devote  myself  to  a  profession  or 
a  trade  before  I  have  mastered  it,  and  in  order 
to  master  it,  or  when  I  accept  the  dogmas  of 
an  art  or  science  in  order  to  learn  them,  —  it 
is  because  of  this  likeness  in  the  method  of  as- 
sent that  I  devote  myself  to  Jesus  Christ.  This  is 
the  very  note  of  the  Incarnation  :  that  the  Son  of 
God  became  Man  that  we  might  believe  in  Him  as 
we  believe  in  man.  Then  is  God  made  man  in  order 
that  we  may  believe  in  God  after  the  manner  that 
we  believe  in  man.  All  the  deepest  and  most  earn- 
est thoughts  of  the  most  earnest  men  point  straight 


276  AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION. 

to  Jesus  Christ,  and  my  owu  heart  and  mind  point 
to  Him  ;  but  if  I  will  not  put  faith  in  Him  as  I  put 
faith  in  a  man,  if  I  will  not  follow  the  pointing,  I  can- 
not expect  that  Christ  will  ever  convince  me ;  for 
this  would  be  to  expect  that  the  method  of  my  reli- 
gion should  be  different  from  the  method  of  true 
human  life,  whereas  religion  is  the  final  expression 
of  life. 

And  I  say  that  if  you  wish  to  admit  the  authority 
of  Jesus  Christ  with  your  whole  free  intelligence  and 
soul,  the  best  way,  the  only  way,  to  arrive  at  this  is 
to  undertake  here  and  now  so  noble,  so  serviceable, 
so  elevated  and  devoted,  a  life  that  you  cannot  do  it 
except  by  Christ,^  and  then  see  wliether  Christ  does 
not  help  you,  —  see  whether  the  certainty  that  He  is 
what  He  claimed  to  be  does  not  break  in  on  your 
mind  and  soul.  We  are  all  agreed  as  to  the  beauty 
and  truth  of  Christ's  maxims  of  practical  life.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  common  ground  nowadays, 
—  common  to  the  socialists  and  the  positivists  and 
the  agnostics,  and  the  Christians  too,  —  so  far  as  the 
ideal  of  the  thing  goes.  Go  out,  then,  and  try  to  live 
it  awhile  ;  try  to  deal  with  your  neighbors,  with  your- 
self, with  God,  according  to  that  standard.  You 
will  fail  constantly ;  but  God  will  see  to  it  that 
sometimes   you   succeed ;   and  when  you  are  for  a 

1  This  is  a  reminiscence  of  a  passage  in  one  of  Phillips  Brooks's 
mid-day  addresses,  delivered,  I  think,  in  Trinity  Church,  New 
York,  and  reported  in  one  of  the  church  newspapers. 


AUTHORITATIVE   RELIGION.  277 

little  while  succeeding,  —  when  pure  thoughts  have 
driven  awhile  your  impurity  away,  and  gentle  deeds 
have  cracked  the  crust  of  your  habitual  selfishness, 
and  the  smile  of  some  lonely  man  or  sick  woman,  or 
of  some  neglected  child  that  you  have  helped,  or  of 
some  servant  that  you  have  shown  courtesy  to,  has 
beamed  on  you,  and  turned  your  old-time  cynicism 
into  trust  and  honor,  —  then  in  that  moment  open 
your  New  Testament  and  read  a  little  of  what  Jesus 
Christ  has  ready  to  say  to  you,  and  see  whether  the 
authority  of  Jesus  Christ  is  not  evident  to  you  at 
last,  whether  His  key  to  human  soul-life  is  not  the 
key,  whether  you  can  possibly  care  for  your  old  life 
any  more,  and  whether  you  can  possibly  lead  the  new 
life  without  Christ's  help ;  whether  you  must  not 
now  protest  to  Him,  as  Peter  protested,  "  Lord,  to 
whom  shall  I  go  ?  Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal 
life."  You  will  perceive  at  last  that  the  Son  of  God 
speaks  with  authority,  and  not  as  the  Scribes ;  that 
every  one  that  loveth  is  born  of  God,  and  knoweth 
God  ;  that  he  that  loveth  not  knoweth  not  God,  for 
God  is  Love  ;  and  that  greater  love  hath  no  man 
than  this,  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his 
friends. 


XXI. 

STANDING  BEFORE   GOD.^ 

As  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  liveth,  before  whom  f  stand.  — 
1  Kings  xviii.  1. 

ONCE  again,  my  brethren,  and  for  the  last  time 
as  yom'  Rector,  I  have  the  privilege  of  ad- 
dressing" you  ;  and  it  is  upon  the  same  old  story. 
As  I  look  back  over  our  three  years  together,  it  ap- 
pears to  me  that  I  have  never  preached  to  you  but 
one  sermon,  —  always  the  same  idea  under  various 
lights  and  from  different  sides  ;  and  that  is,  the  ulti- 
mate simplicity  of  religion  and  the  inevitableness  of 
our  Christian  faith.  That  is  the  conviction  that  pos- 
sesses me  ;  that  is  what  I  believe  to  be  God's  mes- 
sage through  me  to  you ;  and  in  that  message,  under 
it  as  a  veil,  I  would  fain  cover  up  to-day,  suggesting 
them  rather  than  expressing,  the  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings of  regret  and  distress,  and  yet  of  faith  and  hope- 
fulness, with  which  I  part  from  you  at  tlie  evident 
call  of  duty.  Surely  it  is  better  so,  and  it  is  easier 
for  me.  It  is  appropriate  that  in  the  House  of  God 
our  personal  feelings  should  be  translated  into  the 

1  Farewell  sermon.     Preached  in  Saint  John's  Church  on  the 
morning  of  the  20th  Sunday  after  Trinity,  Oct.  30,  1892. 


STANDING   BEFORE   GOD.  279 

larger   and   less   individual   expression   of    common 
prayer  and  praise. 

"  As  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  liveth,  before  whom 
I  stand."  This  was  an  ordinary  Hebrew  idiom,  a 
conventional  phrase.  In  the  Old  Testament  usage 
it  appears  to  have  sprung  from  the  vocation  of 
the  Levites,  who,  as  we  are  told  in  the  book  Deu- 
teronomy, "were  separated  to  stand  before  the 
Lord  to  minister  unto  Him."  It  was  the  Jewish 
priest's  essential  duty  to  realize  mans  nearness  to 
God,  and  to  help  the  common  people  to  perceive 
their  God,  "  about  their  path  and  bed,  spying  out 
all  their  ways."  But  in  proportion  as  the  priest's 
function  was  effective  this  phrase  descriptive  of  the 
priestly  character  would  widen  into  a  description  of 
the  people's  character  also  ;  for  the  whole  gist  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  to  bear  witness  that  the  priests 
were  intended  to  be  representative  of  the  people,  — 
not  to  come  between  them  and  God,  but  to  go  be- 
fore them  towards  their  God  as  spokesmen.  In 
actual  fact  the  people,  no  less  than  their  priests, 
were  daily  and  hourly  "  standing  before  God."  God's 
service  was  their  duty,  God's  law  their  rule ;  God's 
eye  was  ever  on  them.  And  from  the  days  of  the 
Exodus  onwards,  as  this  truth  became  more  and 
more  a  part  of  the  common  Jewish  experience,  we 
find  the  phrase  of  our  text  passing  over  from  the  re- 
stricted usage  of  the  Levitical  order  into  the  wider 
parlance  of  the  people  generally.     Any  and   every 


280  STANDING  BEFORE   GOD. 

man,  if  he  wished  to  impart  solemnity  to  what  he 
was  saying,  might  preface  it  with  the  assertion,  "  As 
the  Lord  God  liveth,  before  whom  I  stand."  True, 
as  usually  happens  in  such  cases,  the  phrase  depre- 
ciated as  it  widened.  Men  ceased  to  feel  the  value 
of  the  idiom  just  because  it  was  so  common.  We 
men  and  women  of  the  English  speech  seldom  recol- 
lect, in  wishing  one  another  "  Good-by,"  that  our 
phrase  is  a  mutual  prayer,  signifying  literally  "  God 
be  with  you."  So  we  must  not  be  surprised  to  find 
how  lightly  a  somewhat  similar  expression  fell  from 
the  old  Hebrew  lips.  Nevertheless  from  Elijah's 
lips  the  words  did  not  fall  lightly.  In  this  matter 
the  privilege  of  genius  and  of  profound  religious 
earnestness  is  the  same.  We  all  know  how  the 
poets  and  great  writers  of  our  literature  owe  much 
of  their  charm  to  their  singular  faculty  of  so  employ- 
ing our  trivial  expressions  that  they  become  once 
more  fresh  and  vivid  ;  and  in  like  manner  it  is  given 
to  the  deeply  religious,  so  to  speak  our  worn-out 
phrases  that  they  come  again  to  us  full-fraught  with 
messages  of  the  soul.  Thus  was  it  in  the  thrilling 
history  of  Elijah  and  Elisha.  When  Elijah  in  his 
conflict  with  Ahab  and  the  prophets  of  Baal,  when 
Elisha  in  his  effort  against  idolatry  in  the  reigns  of 
Jeroboam  and  Jehoshaphat  and  Jehu,  uttered  the 
idiom  of  our  text,  they  did  actually  convey  the  im- 
pression of  persons  who  were  building  their  hopes 
and  staying  their  minds  on  Jehovah  ;  and  their  influ- 


STANDING   BEFORE   GOD.  281 

ence  revived  in  many  another  soul  around  them  a 
vital  sense  of  that  high  and*holy  Presence  in  whose 
inviolable  shadow  their  life  was  moving  on. 

But  it  is  not  of  Elijah  or  Elisha  that  I  mean  to 
speak  to-day ;  I-  wish  rather,  as  briefly  and  point- 
edly as  I  can,  to  consider  with  you  what  this  word 
of  theirs  will  mean  for  us,  my  brethren,  if  we  use  it 
as  thoroughly  as  they  did. 

"  The  Lord  God  liveth,  before  whom  I  stand." 
We  do  not  stand  alone,  then  ;  we  do  not  even  stand 
simply  and  solely  before  our  visible  neighbors  and 
fellow-men,  before  the  objects  and  the  strong  forces 
of  this  material  world,  before  our  outward  circum- 
stances, as  we  call  them,  that  hedge  us  in  and  seem 
to  shape  our  lives.  Tn  fact  we  stand  directly,  stand 
finally,  stand  always,  before  Almighty  God ;  our  be- 
ing is  in  Him.  Yet  in  every  age  Ave  try  to  stand 
apart  from  God ;  and  each  successive  age  brings  to 
mankind  its  own  special  temptations  and  facilities 
for  living  presumably  without  God,  —  for  shutting 
up  the  windows  of  the  soul  against  God,  albeit  our 
God  is  in  fact  always  at  hand. 

One  of  the  special  temptations  of  this  particular 
age  is  the  fancy  that  we  can  do  our  thinking  without 
God,  —  that,  however  it  may  be  morally,  intellectually 
at  any  rate  we  can  live  without  Him,  —  that  while 
Conscience  may  well,  for  practical  purposes,  presup- 
pose God,  there  is  no  practical  necessity  that  Reason 
should   presuppose   God.     Let   me  explain  what  I 


282  STANDING   BEFORE   GOD. 

mean.  I  really  believe  that  the  number  of  those 
who  try  to  live  morally  before  God  is  larger  than  it 
used  to  be ;  for  I  cannot  else  explain  the  voider  diffu- 
sion of  such  ideas  as  justice,  and  compassion,  and  the 
duty  of  assuaging  poverty  and  pain,  which  so  mark 
our  civilization.  In  fact  there  is  now  abroad  a  general 
passion  of  mercifulness  -which  argues  well  for  us  in 
comparison  with  earlier  ages  ;  for  this  feeling  extends 
far  beyond  the  pale  of  Church  membership  and  reli- 
gious profession.  But  although  a  great  many  people 
are  now  endeavoring  to  live  morally  as  those  must 
who  recognize  that  they  arc  standing  before  God,  how 
many  there  are  who  are  willing  to  live  intellectually 
apart  from  God,  —  as  if,  man  being  a  personal  unit, 
his  brains  and  conscience  could  possibly  be  sundered ! 
Yet  is  it  not  true,  my  brethren,  that  many  a  man  in 
our  day  is  honestly  attempting  to  take  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  as  his  practical  standard,  who  never- 
theless fancies  that  he  can  do  his  thinking  as  he 
pleases;  that  is,  that  moral  considerations  and  the 
consciousness  of  God  have  to  do  with  our  wills,  but 
not  with  our  intellects  as  such  ?  In  its  latest  phase 
this  spirit  has  been  manifest  in  the  attitude  of  many 
persons  even  towards  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  Himself. 
It  is  sometimes  stated  blankly,  and  very  often  it  is 
consciously  or  unconsciously  insinuated,  that  while 
Christ  is  the  moral  Master  and  the  moral  ideal  of 
mankind,  His  intellectual  conclusions  were  far  behind 
our  age,  so  that  we  in  some  ways  know  more  of  reli- 


STANDING   BEFORE   GOD.  283 

gion  than  He  did.  This  is  the  fundamental  issue  of  sev- 
eral recent  much-read  novels  ;  and  what  we  there  find 
in  fiction  may  be  found  otherwise  in  countless  treatises 
and  essays  that  are  popular  to-day.  Hereby  it  is  dis- 
tinctly asserted  that  what  Christ  said  in  the  Gospels 
theologically,  that  what  He  taught  us  about  the  rela- 
tion of  God  to  the  world  as  our  Maker  and  our 
Father,  has  no  such  binding  force  on  our  intellects  as 
what  He  said  about  what  is  practically  right  and 
wrong  has  on  our  consciences  and  ivills.  As  if  it 
were  rationally  conceivable  to  have  such  a  moral  hold 
of  God  as  Christ  had  without  effect  upon  the  mind's 
hold  of  God  !  As  if,  to  any  one  who  appreciates  the 
actual  unity  of  our  human  personality,  it  could  be 
possible  in  the  same  breath  to  exalt  Christianity  as 
our  moral  ideal,  and  then  to  depreciate  it  intellectu- 
ally !  As  if  it  can  be  admitted  for  a  moment  that 
Christ's  acts  and  standards  of  action  could  be  ideally 
true,  while  at  the  same  time  His  ideas  and  methods 
of  mind,  His  whole  intellectual  grasp  of  God,  could 
be  untrue !  Nay,  as  if  Christ  Himself  had  not  de 
clared  that  His  morality  depended  on  His  intellectu- 
ality ;  that  to  do  as  He  did  would  lead  men  straight 
to  think  as  He  did  !  for  He  said  expressly,  ''  He  that 
doeth  the  will  of  God  shall  know  of  the  doctrine." 
And,. my  brethren,  if  you  desire  a  practical  demon- 
stration of  the  fallacy  of  this  whole  view  of  the 
matter,  you  have  it  ready  to  hand  in  the  ideas  as  to 
what  truth  itself  is  which  prevail  among  very  many 


284  STANDING   BEFORE   GOD. 

of  our  would-be  leaders  of  thought  to-day.  There  is 
hardly  a  better  way  of  getting  the  intellectual  bearings 
of  a  mau  than  to  ask  him  what  he  means  by  truth. 
Drive  that  question  home  with  him.  Compel  him  to 
give  you  a  frank  answer.  You  will  find  continually 
that  his  notion  of  truth  is  simply  human  knowledge 
of  facts.  It  is  what  this  age  has  come  to  know  of 
itself,  and  of  the  universe.  It  is  the  sum  of  enlight- 
ened human  opinions  ;  it  is  man's  views  of  the  world. 
But  if  man  is  the  touchstone  of  truth,  what  will  there 
be  left  of  truth  when  (as  the  men  of  science  assure 
us  is  certain  to  happen)  this  world  has  ceased  to  be, 
and  man  has  ceased  with  it  ?  If  man  is  the  centre 
and  the  touchstone  of  the  truth,  then  when  this 
human  race  vanishes,  the  truth  will  vanish  too.  Yet 
the  truth  cannot  consist  in  any  such  system  of  change- 
able relations.  When  this  human  reason  of  ours 
seized  this  idea  of  truth,  it  was  an  idea  of  something 
absolute  and  permanent,  and  to  be  depended  on,  not 
of  something  always  in  a  flux.  Reason,  as  the  Greek 
philosophers  would  say,  demands,  as  such,  apousto, 
a  settled  point,  on  which  to  fix  the  lever  of  its  think- 
ing ;  round  which  to  arrange  the  various  facts  that 
from  time  to  time  we  come  to  know ;  and  you  cannot 
get  this  anywhere  in  a  world  where  all  is  changeable. 
Depend  upon  it,  we  must  give  up  our  very  idea  of 
truth,  as  such,  unless  we  cling  to  our  idea  of  God 
the  Heavenly  Father.  Truth  is  not  what  man  knows 
of  the  world  ;  it  is  what  God  knows,  it  is  the  relation 


STANDING  BEFORE   GOD.  285 

of  God  to  the  world ;  and  man  knows  only  so  much 
of  real  truth  as  he  knows  about  God.  Facts  are  not 
truth.  Facts  only  become  truth  when  they  have  been 
interpreted ;  and  no  fact  can  be  rightly  interpreted 
unless  it  has  been  brought  into  its  connection  with 
God.  Nothing  that  man  discovers  from  time  to  time 
is  really  true  unless  and  until  man  has  got  this  dis- 
covery into  its  relation  to  God.  If  the  universe  of 
relations  has  no  permanent  centre,  then  the  universe 
is  irrational  and  there  is  no  such  thing  as  truth.  If 
the  universe  has  a  centre,  man  cannot  be  that  centre, 
because  he  is  transitory.  Depend  upon  it,  to  think 
aright,  to  think  thoroughly,  we  must  have  for  our 
first  intellectual  principle  that  motto  of  Elijah,  "  The 
Lord  God  liveth,  before  whom  I  stand."  The  very 
principle  which  has  long  proved  itself  to  be  the  most 
serviceable  for  practical  morality  is  also  the  only 
principle  for  thorough  thinking.  The  basis  of  morals 
and  the  basis  of  rational  thought  are  one  and  the 
same,  —  the  living  and  eternal  God,  our  Father  ;  and  it 
hurts  human  thinking  just  as  much  to  let  God  go  as 
it  hurts  human  morals  to  let  Him  go.  God  or  chaos 
is  the  only  intellectual  alternative,  just  as  God  or 
hell  is  the  only  moral  alternative  that  humanity  can 
grasp,  if  man  be  personal  and  moral  at  all.  Now 
reason  refuses  to  admit  the  possibility  that  the  uni- 
verse is  chaos,  just  as  conscience  insists  on  Heaven 
with  God.  Therefore  reason  and  conscience  both 
bring  us  straight  to  God,  on  whom  alone  morality 


286  STANDING  BEFORE   GOD. 

and  truth  depend.  If  the  creative  power  in  us  and 
behind  us  be  not  a  mind,  and  not  a  will,  and  not  a 
spirit  of  righteousness,^  then  human  morality  and 
human  truth  are  equally  the  figment  of  a  dream,  sig- 
nifying nothing,  and  the  process  of  our  latest  thought 
is  the  last  step  to  the  suicide  of  reason.  Reason  is 
the  adjustment  of  the  mind  to  steadfast  conditions, 
and  the  only  condition  absolutely  steadfast  is  the  God 
that  Christ  revealed.  "  No  religious  mind  tolerates 
the  notion  of  being  really  thrown  upon  itself;  this  is 
only  to  say,  in  other  words,  that  it  is  thrown  back 
upon  God."^ 

Ah,  has  it  seemed  to  some  of  you,  my  brothers,  as 
if  my  subject  this  morning  were  hardly  of  practical 
moment  for  professing  Christians  like  ourselves  ?  Do 
not  believe  it.  The  fading  away  of  religious  purpose 
and  passion,  of  the  vital  recognition  of  the  living  God 
whose  presence  we  acknowledge  with  our  lips,  is 
very  common  even  among  those  who  by  profession 
are  Christians.  By  way  of  testing  the  matter,  make 
a  point  of  taking  your  mind  unawares.^  What  are 
you  usually  thinking  about  when  your  mind  is  free  ; 
when  your  business,  and  your  duties,  and  your  proper 
pleasures  are  over ;  when  there  is  a  lull  in  your  day's 
routine ;    when  you  are  quite  alone  ;   when  neither 

1  I  am  here  indebted  to  an  article  on  "Religion  without  God," 
which  appeared  in  the  London  "  Spectator  "  of  September  5,  1891. 

2  Mozley,  quoted  in  Dean  Church's  "Oxford  Movement,"  p.  349. 

3  I  am  here  indebted  to  one  of  Canon  Liddon's  sermons,  but  in  the 
absence  of  books  I  cannot  make  the  reference  more  definite. 


STANDING   BEFORE   GOD.  287 

friends  nor  books  claim  you ;  in  the  twilight  hours, 
when  your  thought  pursues  its  own  course  ?  Are  you 
busy  with  ideas  that  tempt  you  to  sin,  —  with  idle 
dreams  verging  on  impurity?  Do  you  croon  over 
imagined  wrongs  ?  Do  you  envy  other  people  ?  Are 
you  scheming  about  the  Avorld  of  fashion,  and  how 
you  can  rise  in  it  ?  Or  does  your  mind  rise  naturall}'^ 
to  God,  because  you  know  that  you  are  standing 
before  Him  ?  Would  you  ever  think  about  God  at 
all  if  you  could  help  it  ?  These  surely  be  practical 
questions,  and  they  rise  right  out  of  my  text  to-day. 
And  oh,  our  formalism  in  worship  !  our  habit  of 
turning  these  very  moments  of  Divine  Service  in  the 
church  into  a  hollow  routine  !  our  shocking  way  of  go- 
ing home  from  them  with  the  contented  feeling  that, 
having  sat  here  for  an  hour  and  a  half  one  day  in 
seven,  we  have  got  on  the  right  side  of  God,  and  can 
afford  therefore  to  leave  Him  alone  for  the  rest  of  the 
week.  That  is  not  standing  before  God.  As  if  the 
forms  of  worship,  when  we  have  made  them  hollow, 
could  possibly  be  substituted  for  the  genuine  recogni- 
tion of  our  God !  and  as  if,  indeed,  worship  is  any- 
thing in  God's  eyes  except  as  the  final  and  more 
finished  expression  of  our  constant  life  !  Believe  me, 
we  should  be  less  perturbed  by  the  ratiocinations  of 
the  avowed  agnostics,  were  it  not  that  too  many  of 
us  are  ourselves  agnostics  unavowed.  Let  us  who 
call  ourselves  Christians,  pause  oftener  than  is  our 
wont  in  these  days  of  strain  and  stress  and  giddiness, 


288  STANDING   BEFORE   GOD. 

and  repeat  in  all  sincerity  Elijah's  words  :  "  The  Lord 
God  liveth,  before  whom  I  stand." 

Once  more.  Think,  in  conclusion,  of  what  is 
termed  by  most  of  us  so  bitterly  the  monotony  of 
average  human  existence,  —  the  inevitable  boredom 
of  our  being.  Here  we  are  this  autumn  returning, 
most  of  us,  to  our  regular  routine ;  is  there  not  in 
many  of  us  a  latent  repugnance  to  the  old  ruts  of 
labor,  to  the  sing-song  of  our  ordinary  conversation, 
to  the  dull  procession  of  the  hours?  Is  there  any 
word  oftener  on  the  lips  even  of  the  young  people  of 
our  more  educated  classes  than  the  expression  that 
this  thing  or  that  person  "  bores  "  them  ?  Well,  my 
brethren,  if  you  leave  God  out  of  your  life  I  think 
that  that  impression  is  inevitable.  To  the  man  or 
woman  who  by  practical  experience  of  life,  or  by  the 
theoretical  intuition  of  it  which  accurate  education 
confers,  has  had  any  wide  views  of  human  existence, 
the  impression  of  boredom  is  sure  to  come,  if  God's 
presence  and  man's  relation  to  Him  be  ignored.  This 
is  why  tlie  oldest  extant  form  of  human  civilization, 
the  Chinese,  wears  pre-eminently  this  attitude  of  the 
bored.  It  cannot  be  tempted  with  promises  of  nov- 
elty, because  it  knows  that  real,  substantial  novelty 
is  out  of  the  question  for  a  race  that  has  lived  six 
thousand  years.  The  superficial  aspects  of  life,  some 
of  its  tools  and  methods,  —  these  may  change ;  but 
the  substance  of  life,  the  final  results  of  it  to  indi- 
vidual beings,  the  joys  and  sorrows  and  the  uses  of 


STANDING  BEFORE  GOD.  289 

it,  —  these  change  not.  Solomon  knew  what  he  was 
talking  about  when  he  declared,  "  There  is  nothing 
new  under  the  sun."  Nay  more.  From  the  stand- 
point of  accomplishment,  this  state  of  things  is  pre- 
cisely what  man  requires.  Here  and  there  there  may 
be  apparent  exceptions,  but  th^se  only  prove  the  rule 
that  in  every  walk  of  life,  to-day  as  always  hereto- 
fore, it  is  not  the  idlers,  nor  "  the  men  on  leave,"  but 
the  steady  toilers,  the  routiniers,  who  "  get  things 
done ; "  and  this  is  why  the  Trades  Unions  have  no 
patience  with  triflers  in  their  ranks.  They  know 
that  the  sameness  of  labor  is  of  the  very  essence  of 
its  success  ;  that  the  man  who  succeeds  is  the  man  who 
goes  to  his  office  at  the  same  hour,  works  mostly  in 
the  same  way,  and  keeps  as  far  as  possible  to  the  same 
general  division  of  labor.  The  experience  of  centuries 
has  taught  the  Trades  Unions  that  the  steady  man, 
the  man  who  "  lasts,"  is  worth  far  more  in  results 
than  many  an  abler  man  who  is  impatient  of  monot- 
ony. "  Eat  when  you  are  hungry  "  appears  at  first  to 
be  a  wise  rule  ;  but  it  is  soon  ascertained  that  if  we 
desire  health  and  strength  from  our  food,  it  is  better 
to  eat  always  at  tlie  same  hours,  about  the  same 
quantity,  and  pretty  much  the  same  proportion  of  the 
relative  constituents  of  food. 

Yet  does  not  monotony  reduce  men  to  mere  ma- 
chines? Hardly.  In  literature,  as  in  trade,  it  has 
been  usually  the  men  of  humdrum  lives  whose  liter- 
ary instincts  were  the  strongest,  and  who  produced 

19 


290  STANDING  BEFORE   GOD. 

most ;  in  art  it  has  been  the  same ;  and  even  outside 
of  the  larger  forms  of  business,  and  outside  of  art 
and  literature  and  what  are  termed  the  "profes- 
sions," those  persons  whose  toil  is  most  confining 
have  been  generally  tlie  most  thoroughly  intelligent. 
It  is  proverbial  that  the  cobblers  and  the  weavers 
are  among  the  most  thoughtful  of  handicraftsmen  ; 
yet  no  business  is  duller  than  theirs.^  The  fact  is 
that  they  become  so  used  to  their  tools,  so  sure  of 
themselves  and  of  their  surroundings,  that  their 
minds  are  free  to  range,  and  have  a  background  to 
range  from.  They  obtain  the  very  solitude  and  se- 
curity which  are  generally  the  conditions  of  intellec- 
tual activity.  No  ;  so  true  is  it  that  monotony  is  the 
lubricant  of  life  that  whenever  man  obeys  his  best 
instincts  we  find  him  trying  to  establish  regularity, 
framing  laws,  founding  institutions,  promoting  hu- 
man organizations,  —  endeavoring,  that  is,  to  pro- 
duce all  around  him  the  very  monotony  which 
nowadays  it  is  the  fashion  theoretically  to  decry. 
Man  takes  his  cue  from  nature,  with  her  endless 
repetitions  of  light  and  dark,  of  calm  and  storm,  of 
warm  and  dry ;  with  her  periods  and  cycles,  where 
change  is  the  superficial  appearance  and  sameness  of 
average  the  fundamental  fact.  Man  feels  before- 
hand that  for  him  a  world  where  there  was  no 
tendency  to  regularity,  no  forceful  order  to  the  in- 

1  I  am  here  indebted  to  an  article  which  appeared  in  the  London 
"Spectator"  last  year. 


STANDING  BEFORE   GOD.  291 

dividual  to  make  a  groove  for  himself,  would  be  a 
world  of  premature  exhaustion.  No ;  it  is  not  the 
monotony  of  labor  that  is  alien  to  us,  but  absence  of 
idea.  The  artist  who  loves  his  art  has  the  idea. 
The  tradesman  who  lives  for  his  home  and  loved 
ones,  or  for  some  wide,  ambitious  vision,  has  the 
idea.  The  true  socialist,  who  works,  not  for  himself 
alone,  but  for  his  fellows,  for  his  kind,  has  the  idea. 
And  to  such  the  most  monotonous  life  is  fullest  of 
interest.  I  believe  that  our  modern  outcry  against 
the  sameness  of  our  existence  is  due  to  one  great 
cause, —  to  our  restlessness;  and  I  am  sure  that 
our  restlessness  has  come  about  quite  naturally 
from  the  general  hurry  and  excitement  of  our  new- 
found means  of  intercommunication.  By  means 
of  universal  cheap  printing,  of  steamships  and 
railways,  of  telegraph  and  telephone,  every  part  of 
the  civilized  world  wakes  up  of  a  morning  to  find 
the  news  of  every  other  part  of  the  world  thrust 
upon  its  mind.  We  lose  our  grip  of  our  own  life, 
because  we  are  distracted  by  the  pull  of  so  many 
other  lives.  In  time  this  new  condition  of  our  civi- 
lization will  work  its  own  cure  ;  the  benefits  of  it 
will  endure,  while  the  special  disadvantages  will 
be  counteracted  by  habit.  It  is  possible  to  get 
so  used  to  the  roar  of  Niagara  as  not  to  notice 
it,  so  accustomed  to  the  strain  of  a  multiform 
business  in  a  great  city  as  not  to  be  perturbed 
by   it.     But    before   this    condition    of    mind    and 


292  STANDING   BEFORE   GOD. 

spirit  can  arrive  amongst  us  a  whole  generation  or 
more  must  pass.  You  and  I  must  die  before  that 
day ;  and  is  there  no  help  for  us  ?  Must  we  be 
sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  the  good  that  others  shall 
hereafter  reap  ?  Are  not  our  souls  as  precious  as 
theirs  ?  Yes  ;  there  is  one  cure  ready  to  our  hand, 
and  only  one.  Take  the  thought  of  God  our  Father 
into  your  restless  life  ;  say  to  yourself  steadily  as 
Elijah  did,  "  The  Lord  God  liveth,  before  whom  I 
stand."  What  our  distracted  modern  natures  want 
is  a  grand,  controlling,  practicable  idea  to  give  calm 
and  concentration  and  overmastering  purpose  to  our 
being.  God  is  that  idea.  I  have  said  that  the  am- 
bitious man,  the  artist,  the  philanthropist,  even  the 
petty  tradesman,  if  fond  of  wife  and  home,  have 
the  idea.  It  is  true.  But  there  are  ideas  and  ideas ; 
there  is  the  idea  that  is  frail  and  fleeting  and  disap- 
pointing, and  the  idea  that  abides ;  the  idea  that  is 
partial,  and  the  idea  that  is  absolute.  Most  human 
ideals,  even  of  the  better  sort,  are  fleeting  and  dis- 
appointing in  the  end.  The  very  best  of  our  ambi- 
tious men,  of  our  toilers  and  philanthropists,  of  our 
lovers  of  home,  when  once  their  experience  is  ripe, 
will  join  in  telling  you,  as  their  forefathers  in  every 
age  have  told,  a  sad  confession  of  incompleteness  and 
of  unsuccess,  and  of  hearts  which,  even  if  true  and 
unbroken,  have  at  any  rate  been  terribly  wrung  and 
overborne  by  the  pains  of  sickness  and  the  mystery 
of  death.     Ah  me,  there  is  but  one  idea  that  stands 


STANDING  BEFORE   GOD.  293 

the  test  of  time  even,  to  say  nothing  of  eternity,  — 
one  idea  that  sums  up  all  the  others,  and  comple- 
ments them  and  adjusts  them  to  the  permanent 
issues  of  the  human  soul,  in  joy  and  sorrow,  in 
achievement  and  disappointment,  in  life  and  death 
and  the  august  opportunities  that  man  still  persists 
in  anticipating  in  the  other  life  that  will  never  end. 
God  is  that  idea.  He  knows  the  end  from  the  be- 
ginning ;  with  Him  is  no  variableness,  neither  shadow 
of  turning.  What  we  call  the  monotony  of  human 
history,  in  the  larger,  longer  view  of  it,  is  but  the 
expression  of  the  supreme  and  final  fact  that  we  and 
all  the  world  live  and  move  and  have  our  being  in 
Him.  How  could  this  world's  forms  and  phases  be 
otherwise  than  same  and  steady  in  the  final  analysis, 
if  this  world  be  God's  world,  as  we  know  it  is  ?  To 
know  and  feel  that  in  the  last  resort  we  live  and 
are  not  for  ourselves  merely,  not  for  our  best  friends 
merely,  not  for  our  nation  or  our  age  merely,  but 
for  Him,  in  Him,  who  is  eternal,  holy,  true,  —  that 
knowledge,  if  kept  vivid,  will  give  pause  and  poise 
and  direction  to  the  most  distracted  mind.  Ah,  and 
God  is  more  than  an  idea ;  He  is  the  heart  of  the 
world.  The  most  insidious,  the  most  fatal,  form  of 
human  restlessness  is  not  of  the  head  but  of  the 
heart.  Do  you  not  know  it,  my  brothers  ?  Is  it  the 
fuss  and  fidget  of  an  overactive  mind  that  is  hardest 
to  cure,  or  the  distress  of  a  disappointed,  of  an  unoc- 
cupied heart  ?     Are  the  men  and  women,  or  the  chil- 


294  STANDING  BEFORE   GOD. 

(Iren,  whose  hearts  are  happy  ever  quite  devoid  of 
peace?  And  to-day,  by  that  verse  from  Elijah's 
mouth,  God  is  saying  to  each  one  of  us,  "  My  son, 
give  Me  thine  heart !  "  When  Elijah,  at  that  crisis  in 
the  fortunes  of  his  afflicted  people,  uttered  before 
Ahab  that  simple  phrase,  "  The  Lord  God  liveth,  be- 
fore whom  I  stand,"  it  was  the  expression  of  a  typi- 
cal human  soul  at  peace  with  itself  because  loving 
the  Heavenly  Father  and  assured  of  His  love  in  re- 
turn. "  Thou  hast  made  us  for  Thyself,  O  God, 
and  our  heart  is  restless  until  it  rests  in  Thee." 


THE    END. 


Date  Due 

,->  «»iliW**^ . 

.•♦*#*#tr^ 

^ 

1    1012  01029  5592 


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